Sunni Women Key to Iraqi Constitution Vote

Salim Mansur is a colleague in the political science department at UWO. He has just published a column about the upcoming Iraq consitutional vote. He predicts the constitution will be accepted.

It's a safe prediction that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis will approve their newly minted constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum.

Interestingly, he says Sunni women will be the key to its approval.

Irrespective of faith and ethnicity, when given the opportunity as in Afghanistan and in Iraq's January election, women have voted to extend the limits of freedom. Women across the Arab-Muslim world know best how cruelly unenlightened and repressive is the patriarchal system imprisoning them.

Women also seem to understand instinctively that a constitutional order, however perfect in conception, must be nurtured through its infancy into maturity with patience, as any living arrangement within family or society requires.

One-half of Sunni Arab voters are women, and in the privacy of the voting booth will more than likely vote for freedom and democracy.

We'll see.... I hope he's right.