Referring to those who sought to abort the election through violence, he said, "We can negotiate with them to lay down their arms. But it doesn't mean we are going to let them be part of the political process."
Asked his views on interpreting Islamic law, or sharia, Jafari suggested that differences in interpretation were acceptable. "As far as the Muslim is concerned," he said, "we are going to do what is needed in a modern and civilized fashion, and he will have freedom of belief, freedom of the way he deals with his economy and freedom of expression of his political views."
Interim Vice President Ibrahim Jafari, center, at regional meeting last year, is a favorite to become Iraq's next premier.
(Hasan Sarbakhshian -- AP)
|
|
For example, on the matter of whether Muslim women are required by Islamic law to cover their hair in public, Jafari said that a woman is "at complete liberty whether she wants to wear something to cover her hair. The same is equally true if she doesn't want to . . . cover her hair. She has full freedom to do so. I have some of my relatives, women, who don't wear [head scarves]. And they come and visit me and we go around. . . . That's the right of women to choose."
His wife wears a head scarf, he added, "not because she's my wife, but because she chose it that way."
Yet when pressed on whether he thinks the state should criminalize private behavior such as adultery, he responded with vague assertions that skirted the issue. Finally, his deputy chief of staff, Adnan Ali Kadhimi, spoke up, saying Jafari meant that "parliament will have to assess whether this issue or that issue has to be considered as if it's against the law or within the law. . . . It's up to the parliament, it's not up to the executive" branch of government.
The Dawa party, which Jafari has belonged to for most of his life, advocates a religiously influenced government. But at Friday's meeting he stressed the need to recognize Iraq's ethnic and religious diversity.
"When they write in the [interim] constitution that the religion of this country is Islam," he said, "that is only a true reflection of the demographic reality that the majority of people of this country are Muslims. At the same time, there is an openness in the constitution that reaches to the other people who are not Muslims."
Fearing for his life, Jafari left Iraq in 1980 with his wife and two young sons. "The last person I said farewell to was my mother," he recalled. Five relatives, including a brother, were later executed by the government of Saddam Hussein. But his family's loss, Jafari added, is "nothing to what the Iraqi people suffered" under Hussein.
In exile -- a period in which he and his wife had three daughters -- Jafari lived first in Iran and then in London. He returned to Iraq in early 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion.
"It was an overwhelming feeling in my heart and my body after coming back to Iraq after 23 years and two months," he said. One of the first things he did was travel to the southern Iraqi city of Karbala, his birthplace, to see the grave of his mother. She had died just a few weeks after her son fled Iraq.
"I visited my mother, but this time in the cemetery," he said.
In telling this story, Jafari's eyes teared up and he shared his belief in the value of tears as an emotional release.
He added: "If I am to summarize life, it is love. Love only. God loves his people, and we love God."
