A little more free speech from Iraq...

[mrph]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2959015.stm

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Baghdad after Friday prayers, to protest against what they see as a foreign occupation of their country.

Comments

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. But it's still going to be their choice, in theory, isn't it? And what's GWB going to do about it if they do vote for Islam?

Commentators here have been saying for ages that if Iraq was democratic, they'd immediately vote in an islamic party. This seems to lend that opinion some weight.

As with Iran before the revolution, religion's been kept out of politics for a long time - it's not surprising that the suppressed clerics now want a voice. Let's just hope that, unlike Iran, it doesn't take a generation before the pendulum starts to swing back the other way.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

One of my co-workers is married to an Iraqui. His entire family still live there. A while ago the subject of "what do Iraquis think of Saddam?" came up at lunch.

J's husband is from a very non-religious family. She said that they really hate Saddam but are worried about the post-Saddam situation because many Iraquis have expressed their dislike of the Baath regime by becoming a lot more religious - for instance, women who don't cover up in public for religious reasons now do it from social pressure - and there is a very real fear that his regime will be replaced by a fundamentalist islamic one.