As is clear from the appended report I posted. There was a really good article in the New Left Review a few years ago, built around an account of a novel first published in Lebanon almost thirty years ago without controversy, then surrounded by much controversy and a demand for a ban when re-issued in Egypt recently. It was a novel built around the relationship between a refugee from the failed communist-led Iraqi uprising and an Algerian woman participant in the Algerian revolution, an exploration of the failures of secular nationalism and socialism, taking in along the way how the veil -- that much celebrated in Fanon -- came to rebound on women post-liberation.
Should also be added, the enlistment of the Saudi's in the fight against the left in the 1970s also set much of the stage. Coincident with the American rightwing project to seize the stage, the Muslim right was also set to work -- don't think it was an initiative thought up by the Saudi's themselves -- setting up newspapers and magazines, religious organisations, etc., many operating out of the UK and also the US. Perhaps this is something to look into; the simultaneity of effort can't be coincidental, or am I being too conspiracist?
>But it should be pointed out that Saddam's earlier secularism and
>the relative egalitarianism of the genders isn't necessarily popular
>with Iraqis. Last year's Gallup poll of Baghdad, the validity of
>which has been doubted in some quarters, reported widespread support
>for a return to more "traditional" gender roles.
I think the privations of the war with Iran followed by the consequences of the post 1991 sanctions had a huge influence on this. In Iraq, it would appear that the two combined to wipe out the secularising middle class, turning them to a religiosity of sorts. There might be a parallel here with Poland, Solidarity and the Church. In an environment where all other secular opposition was severely repressed, religion came to be simultaneously the cover and the refuge. Shia evidently came under the influence of developments in Iran.
As for the gender equality, I think there's nothing surprising here. In patriarchal societies -- and Arab (and Kurdish: there's a report of a significant increase in "honour killings" in autonomous Kurdish areas post 1991) societies are probably more patriarchal than most -- gender equality is always going to meet up with much opposition. If I'm not mistaken, in the 1960s US, as the second wave of women's emancipation was taking off, wasn't there much opposition as well, including from the left?
>And speaking of polls, there's this...
I think this is a contingent result, as indicated in the FT report itself. If circumstances change, that support will likely melt, to a "moderate" Sistani. The Mehdi army is apparently drawing its recruits from the young and unemployed, the poorest segments -- precisely those who were to be "liberated", if Washington's propaganda is taken seriously. It would be an example of how American actions shape the responses of people. But it looks like there's determination to provide the idea of al-Sadr a boost. Half a million in demonstration in Lebanon, thousands in the Gulf states? We are looking at a sequence of actions and events that's de-stabilising the whole region. But perhaps 'objectively' this is cause for celebration of sorts? =:> The pre-condition of change was going to have to be a de-stabilisation of the existing regimes. The short- to medium-term consequences are, however, probably too horrible to contemplate, what with Israel's nuclear capability, and the UK too talking of trading in their Tridents for usable battlefield nuclear weapons. And the US crazy right howling for nuking the barbarians.
kj khoo