Which is worse for Iraq: Ba’athist rule under a criminal like Saddam Hussein, or the rule of Shiite religious parties led by even more corrupt, backward, and reactionary mullahs, with Iran as their patron?

This question is pertinent to the ongoing debate in the Iraqi parliament about proposed amendments to the Personal Status Law, which consider setting the legal marriage age for girls at biological puberty, meaning as young as nine!

So, we have transitioned from the bloody Ba’athist regime and its tribal fanaticism to a mullah-led regime that is indifferent to basic values. The religious texts are seen as superior to any moral, humanitarian, or biological considerations. The astonishment is even greater than that caused by ISIS when they were beheading people. The audacity of these mullahs, who are promoting and legislating child marriages, has reached unprecedented levels, with some of them even discussing the “legitimacy of enjoying infants”!

These claims have not prompted any corrective action within the “Hawza” (Shiite seminaries), as “religious texts do not condemn this.” The initiating parties are armed with an “old” fatwa from the prominent Iraqi cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which states that the marriage age for a girl is at her biological maturity. The cleric’s office has not commented on this debate, which has been interpreted as tacit approval of the amendments.

What we hear about child marriages in Iraq is not just fatwas affecting religious circles; this subject has found its way into the elected parliament. The mullahs who present these views to the Iraqis are not just mosque imams; they have political parties in the parliament with a majority. When they sensed hesitation from some of their colleagues in the parliamentary blocs, they struck a deal with their Sunni counterparts. This deal involves passing a general amnesty law, which Sunnis see as justice for the grievances they suffered after the fall of the Ba’ath regime.

The last person not opposing the amnesty law was former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is not known for his tolerance toward Sunnis, but the deal requires some compromise and healing of old wounds.

So, Shiite parties can overlook their issues with Sunni parties in exchange for passing the child marriage law! And Sunni parties, in turn, lack the sensitivity to the potential marriage of Shiite girls, as long as the proposed law gives a margin of independence for the sects to decide what they deem appropriate for their citizens’ personal status!

As for the third component of “Iraqi national identity” –the Kurds, they seem to adopt an attitude of “watermelons breaking watermelons”—a Lebanese expression used when one wishes to distance themselves from a discussion or dispute. The Kurdish concerns are outside the scope of Iraqi humanitarian issues, unless those issues affect Kirkuk or the disputed areas, or the region’s share of the central government’s budget.

Thus, Shiite Iraqi girls have no protector from the parliament, the religious parties, or the female lawmakers who were elected to the parliament under Iraq’s electoral quota system and who are most enthusiastic about the regressive amendments to the Personal Status Law.

More than twenty years have passed since the fall of the Ba’ath regime, half of which Iraq spent under American occupation, culminating in the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The other half has been under Iranian influence, which now culminates in the child marriage law. Between these two calamities, a third disaster emerged: the ISIS era, which saw rivers of blood shed, with both American and Iranian forces fighting the organization, leading to the rise of the Popular Mobilization Forces and affiliated factions.

This tumultuous period has led Iraq to the child marriage law, and no one is innocent of this outcome. After occupation comes guardianship, and after guardianship comes subjugation. Iraqis are left to a system that caters to the interests of the occupier and solidifies the influence of the guardian, with all other violations and crimes beyond American and Iranian interests deemed as “Iraqi affairs”!

Isn’t this exactly what happened in Afghanistan after the return of the Taliban with American sponsorship? Coincidentally, while the child marriage law debate was taking place in Iraq, a law was passed in Afghanistan prohibiting women from speaking loudly, as “a woman’s voice is considered an aura.”