This is not good news from Iraq; Shi’ite members of the Iraqi Governing Council have voted to abolish civil codes that give women more freedom than in most Islamic countries, putting family law under the jurisdiction of shari’a: Women in Iraq Decry Decision To Curb Rights. (Hat tip: NC.)

BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 — For the past four decades, Iraqi women have enjoyed some of the most modern legal protections in the Muslim world, under a civil code that prohibits marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce and male favoritism in child custody and property inheritance disputes.

Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship did not touch those rights. But the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council has voted to wipe them out, ordering in late December that family laws shall be “canceled” and such issues placed under the jurisdiction of strict Islamic legal doctrine known as sharia.

This week, outraged Iraqi women — from judges to cabinet ministers — denounced the decision in street protests and at conferences, saying it would set back their legal status by centuries and could unleash emotional clashes among various Islamic strains that have differing rules for marriage, divorce and other family issues.

“This will send us home and shut the door, just like what happened to women in Afghanistan,” said Amira Hassan Abdullah, a Kurdish lawyer who spoke at a protest meeting Thursday. Some Islamic laws, she noted, allow men to divorce their wives on the spot.

“The old law wasn’t perfect, but this one would make Iraq a jungle,” she said. “Iraqi women will accept it over their dead bodies.” …

The order, narrowly approved by the 25-member council in a closed-door session Dec. 29, was reportedly sponsored by conservative Shiite members. The order is now being opposed by several liberal members as well as by senior women in the Iraqi government.

Yesterday I quoted George Will’s column for City Journal, in which he asked:

Will two years suffice for America—as Woodrow Wilson said of the Latin American republics—to teach Iraq to elect good men?

These regressive elements within Iraq must be defeated; if shari’a is allowed to take away women’s freedom, the entire Iraqi effort risks failure.

An aside: an annoying trend in mainstream media is to refer to theocratic troglodytes like these Shi’ite council members as “conservative.” But Western political categorizations are meaningless in terms of Islamic politics; when Western media uses them, they inform us more about their own bias than about the politics involved, by associating “conservatives” with the worst elements of Islam.