They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.-The Great Gatsby
Ok, no doubt that Iraq has a bunch of dudes on Death Row. No doubt that technically having Gay sex is a crime (under an old Saddam law).
Do we know how many *if any *of the dudes on death row in Iraq are there only because they are gay or having gay sex?
This thread is very timely, in that I have just returned from an alternate timeline, using Prof. Bricker’s Inter-Dimensional Coach Car™ (Pat. Pend.).
President Gore, of course, didn’t invade Iraq. But Saddam Hussein’s death penalty for homosexuality still stands, and, interestingly enough, the SDMB in that alternate timeline just started a thread about whether we should do something about it, which reportedly President Lieberman is considering.
What should I tell them, if I return?
(In other words, Saddam’s law predated our invasion, and it’s not a huge leap to infer that this particular issue would have arisen regardless of our invasion. What’s the right answer for us if you take the invasion out of the picture?)
Nothing. It would be a waste of time. Hell they may arrest you for daring to question their “divinely inspired” whateverthehelltheyaredoing.
We have all these “good muslims”, each with their own personal version of Allah, itching to get at each others throats. Sunni, Shiite, plus a few other flavors. They all hate each other. Each, given the chance, each group would run the place into the ground with their own “religious courts”. Nothing you could say with your TARDIS would be listened to.
The latest opinion poll of Iraqis might shed some light on whether they are headed for a theocracy: March 2009 Iraqi Opinion Poll
In particular this question:
The results:
Democracy: 64%
Islamic state: 19%
Strong leader: 14%
Don't know 3%
Not a lot of support for an Islamic theocracy in Iraq. And those numbers hold for Kurds, Sunni, and Shia with only slight variations. Only 29% of Iraqis think that religious institutions should be involved more in politics at all, while 44% think they have too much influence. (The rest either don’t know or think it’s about right)
80% of Iraqis want more reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites.
As for Iran gaining power and influence in Iraq, that doesn’t appear to be in the cards either. Only 12% of Iraqis think Iran is a positive influence.
The national government has exactly the same approval ratings as Barack Obama has in the U.S, and the support for militias has evaporated.
As for the executions… This is a cultural thing. I don’t like it, but you’re not going to find much different in any other middle eastern country outside of Israel. 508 people were executed in the Middle East last year, according to Amnesty International. And somewhere between 1718 and 7,000 were executed in China.
As for Iraq’s executions being gay or lesbians, the first tipoff anyone should have had that this was not exactly correct was when they found out that the link to the Iraqi LGBT site went to a page that primarily begged for donations.
That is encouraging, Sam, but the people answering the poll may not be the ones who have the most influence in the development and eventual form of their government.
NONONO don’t you understand! Some of them are Gypsies, Handicapped and Jews!
Well, the same is true of any public opinion poll. The poll was conducted in person, from a random sampling of over 2200 Iraqis in all regions of the country. But so long as Iraq is having free and fair votes, I’d say these opinions are a pretty good indicator of where the country is headed.
I’m not saying that free and fair votes are guaranteed - there’s a hell of a lot of corruption throughout the middle east. But clearly there’s no yearning in the population for a theocracy or for close ties with Iran, and the government enjoys strong support and the vast majority of the population wants to see Iraq remain a state with a strong central government and Democratic principles.
The biggest threat to this is probably going to come from the Kurds. the Sunni/Shia split seems to be healing itself, but the Kurds want autonomy and control of major oil supplies, and that’s going to cause a lot of friction. I could see the Sunni and Shia allying together in opposition to the Kurds if they push hard for this, and that could open a whole new can of worms.
Iraq is getting better, and it doesn’t seem to be headed for any of the disaster scenarios some predicted, but that can change. It’s not out of the woods yet by any stretch of the imagination.
That’s a good thing, IF it happens. Call me a pessimist.