Democracy In Iraq

For centuries establishing democracy has been a great issue for countries in the Middle East. One country which has had an extreme amount of difficulties in establishing democracy is Iraq. Iraq is a Muslim country and unlike Western countries, has been ruled mainly by religion instead of by an actual government. Equality is a very important principle, without which no country can be purely democratic. Iraq is incapable of forming a Western-style democracy because of many social, political, cultural, and religious factors that don’t allow the formation of equality. Socially, Iraq is very different from most other countries. It has had many difficulties in establishing equality between its peoples, because of their great diversity. The greatest

The health care that women receive is for the most part not as good as what men receive. Women are also unprotected physically. They always have to live in fear of attack. Rape and murder are just two examples of the things women can be subject to. The government of Iraq does not do much to protect them from these hardships. According to SIGI, when a rape case is reported to the government, the man is supposed to be imprisoned for about 10 years. However, if the girl and the man that raped her get married then as the girl’s legal husband, he can no longer be punished for rape, and so he does not have to serve the consequences (Restricted Physical Identity). In order for a democratic Iraq to be established, all the current gender inequalities will have to be abolished. Iraq's population is also diverse in regard to religion. The most dominant religious group is Islam. Within Islam there are further divisions: between the Shiites and the Sunnis. The Shiites are the more numerous of the two. For years though, until 2003, the Sunnis had been in power. Their ruler, Saddam Hussein, was discriminating against the Shia Muslims. Creating a national identity based on Sunni principles and beliefs was his main goal. The

Equality is one of the most important things needed in a democratic country, and is one of the things that Iraq is missing. The inequality in Iraq can be seen in a wide range of things, from social, to religious, and also ethnical. There are also many other factors contributing to the inequality in Iraq, but these are the main ones. If Iraq does not succeed in achieving equality between men and women, between different religious groups, and also between different ethnicities, democracy, or at least the Western style, will not be possible. All of the inequalities inside the population of Iraq are also leading to a lot of violence, both by people trying to get other people to submit to them, or the inferior group’s rebellions against their superiors. This violence hinters democracy even