Ready, steady, shift

The time of vote

To postpone or not to postpone elections in Iraq8212;that8217;s the debate now. The arguments on both sides are apocalyptic. This week, The New York Times lent its voice to the dire warnings of impending 8216;8216;civil war8217;8217; between minority Sunni and majority Shiite Muslims that would create instability throughout the Middle East. Elections must be postponed, said the paper, if Iraq is to survive as a nation in which the minorities are assured of their basic rights and a voice in the major decisions.

The argument is that a revised election timetable and modified procedures that actively encourage minority participation would reassure the cowering Sunni Arabs that their representation is valuable in an Iraqi democracy. While the Sunnis should not aspire to the same disproportionate clout that they enjoyed in Saddam8217;s regime, in a reinvented nation, as the NYT put it, 8216;8216;the Shiites need to demonstrate that they will not treat the Sunnis the way the Sunnis treated them8217;8217;.

Those who push for elections on schedule argue that if elections are postponed, the terrorists would feel emboldened, not the Sunni moderates. Also, that Iraq is in the middle of a civil war anyway, and therefore postponement would serve no purpose.

In influential sections of the US commentariat, they8217;re also arguing that early elections are desirable because they could prepare the ground for an early US exit by shifting the onus to remake Iraq on the Iraqis. In The Washington Post, columnist Jim Hoagland railed against those who insist that the US has 8216;8216;broken8217;8217; Iraq and therefore 8216;8216;owns8217;8217; it and must 8216;8216;fix8217;8217; it. As for the doubt about Sunni participation and its implications, the influential columnist shrugged: 8216;8216;Legitimacy is a relative concept, as the collection of democracies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and authoritarian regimes that make up the United Nations demonstrates8217;8217;.

Amid the swirling debate, Lebanon8217;s The Daily Star described a 8216;8216;typical day8217;8217; in Iraq. Like Thursday last. There was 8216;8216;death, destruction and grieving8217;8217;, the assassination of two aides to the Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the kidnapping of a Turkish businessman and the murder of seven of his Iraqi employees, an intensification of US military operations. The editorial raged against the conceit that the election will be a turning point in Iraq. Or that the US can effect a tidy exit from the country.

Right to offend

Ever since it was forced by Sikh protests to close at the Birmingham Rep last month, the play Behzti has added to the lively discussions that usually throb in the British media on multiculturalism and the limits of tolerance. Last week, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, the writer of the play, broke her silence and joined the debate.

In an article in The Guardian, she sounded undaunted. She expressed anger at the threats and abuse against her family; she asserted her right as a writer to set her story about human frailties in the gurdwara.

Just where must the lines be drawn, should they be drawn at all, in a multicultural society? Also in The Guardian, writer and columnist Timothy Garton-Ash took on the challenge. Such a society needs not more taboos but more tolerance for taboo-breaking, he urged. And this, he stressed, applies to everyone equally, whether they belong to the majority or the minority religions. Garton-Ash was disagreeing with the view that insists that the established, majority religion can and should take more stick than minority religions.