yes - i must admit this is a knock-on effect of the war in iraq that i hadn't thought about much at all. I'm looking forward to a glut of art work of all kinds emerging from a much less oppressed Iraq

Thanks J, I appreciate your open mind regarding such things - most of us are pretty set in concrete!

If, as the current administration insists, We The People went into Iraq for the purpose of removing their strongman and liberating the Iraqi people, it would naturally follow that there would be an outpouring of all forms of art from a newly "unrepressed" population.

My guess is that the clerics there will put a stop to it before it goes to a place the clerics think is "too far", which may include music of any kind, works unflattering to Islam or to the clerics themselves, or anything else vaguely "un-Iraqi" or "un-Muslim", depending on how the clerics define those terms.

I hope I'm wrong, and that free expression can flourish, unfettered by religious, censorial, or foreign intervention.

It is absolutely imperative that clerics not be allowed to dictate any matters of state in Iraq. I believe that will be the case and a condition of Iraqi self-rule.

It's a rare Muslim country where the clerics suggest, rather than insist. Let's hope it happens in Iraq.

There just seems to be a tendency in that part of the world for democracy to lead to theocracy. If we try to prevent it, we thwart the will of the people and they accuse us of being anti-democratic. It's Catch 22.

I still like the Turk system; we just need to set up a secular Iraqi militia.

JR, where has democracy led to theocracy in the Muslim world? I'm not aware of any democracies ever having existed there. Please enlighten me for future reference.

Algeria, even Pakistan have voted to impose greater or lesser elements of Islamic theocracy. It IS a catch-22 and Turkey does seem to be the best system right now: "you can vote for anything EXCEPT theocracy, which is of course anti-democratic, so perhaps not allowing a democracy to vote anti-democratically isn't the contradiction it appears to be.

Wasn't it Nigeria that was in the news recently with the woman who was sentenced to be stoned to death for adultry? It was some democracy which has adopted Shari'a. I think Mauritania has gone the same way, not sure.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran was quite popular; that was actually a movement TOWARD democracy after the Shah.

What generally seems to happen is a military intervention when the religious parties get majority support and look set to impose theocracy. That's what happened in Algeria, Pakistan and Alabama (whups, how did that one get there). Egypt's president Mubarak is using the threat of a popular Islamic movement to justify his increasingly dictatorial looking regime.

yes, it was the northern Islamic majority areas that "voted" for sharia and the central government isn't powerful enough to say you can't do things like that