REVELRY In Iraq, guys gaping at dancers in a bar may hint at a democratic future.

By TIM ARANGO

Published: April 16, 2011

BAGHDAD — Tariq Harb, who was a military attorney under Saddam Hussein and is now a constitutional lawyer and television talking head, was happy to see the liquor flowing again at the Iraqi Writers Union’s outdoor cafe. But many other Iraqis aren’t. “There are people who want to kill me because I drink,” he said, shuffling prayer beads at the cafe. “We are fighting the religious educators, the imams, the preachers, who are extremists.”

So goes the struggle to define Iraq’s emergent democracy and whether it can balance religion and secularism. If the issue of liquor offers any clues, the effort remains a work in progress.

In January, bars and clubs, including the Writers Union, were raided in what many Iraqis saw as a government move toward a stricter interpretation of Islamic law. The author of the ban on alcohol was the head of the Baghdad Provincial Council, Kamil al-Zaidi, who told The New York Times, “We are a Muslim country, and everyone must respect that.”

But soon after, as protests for reform began about other issues, the boozy haunts were allowed to reopen. And since then, Baghdad has seen a surprising renaissance of its night life.

It hasn’t been the only sign here this year of a tilt away from Islam, and toward a more expansive view of personal freedoms. The new education minister reopened art and music classes that the previous minister had banned. An attempt to require female government employees to wear a veil was blocked in Parliament. Even Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, responded to France’s ban on full-face veils for women with a statement that sounded remarkably like an embrace of democratic tolerance: “According to Muslim law, it is not an obligation to wear the hijab, but to ban it by law is a repression of freedom. Forcing women to wear the hijab, or not to wear it, both are unacceptable.”

Still, Iraq remains a volatile laboratory for testing how Islamic a democracy can be, and vice versa. Much has gone wrong here, in a country of mixed religions and customs that hardened into a place of bloodletting divided largely along Muslim sectarian lines once American troops overthrew its dictator in 2003. The strict Islamists, though, have not won yet, and this may point to a couple of tentative lessons.

A constitution with places for Islam and democracy is not necessarily an oxymoron. But the effort to find a balance between them makes for much pushing and shoving, and will test the strength of the democracy. In fact, both Islam and democracy are enshrined in the constitution that Americans helped write six years ago.

Lately, the seesaw has been tilting away from the Islamists, but that may reflect little more than the current moment’s tug for reform throughout the region. Meanwhile, the militant fringe of Islamists retains the option of violence if Islamist lawmakers don’t prevail; even now, liquor stores are frequently hit with explosions.

“The big problem faced by Iraq is not Islam and democracy, but divisions in the body politic and the state,” said Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor who advised the Coalition Provisional Authority on writing the constitution that a national referendum approved in 2005.

In late February, inspired by risings by Arabs elsewhere, Iraqis held their own protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square; their grievances included inadequate government services, corruption and the slow creep of Islamic interference in the personal freedoms of the young.

They were attacked by security forces, and the protests did not blossom nationally. But it appears that one accommodation the authorities made — perhaps out of a cold political calculation after seeing uprisings topple governments elsewhere — was to dial back the crackdown on night life and impositions on other freedoms.

Amid the Arab Spring, and the attendant concern in the West about the role Islam will play as countries reach for democracy, there is a tendency to regard Iraq as sui generis — a shaky democracy imposed by American force that offers few lessons easy to apply elsewhere in the Middle East. Professor Feldman sees it differently:

“In the context of every other country in the Middle East, with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and in Tunisia, we are going to see elections where Islamic parties are going to play a part. Iraq provides a model for how devoted Islamic parties that say they are committed to democracy are embedded in a constitutional order that guarantees Islam and democracy.”

The alcohol issue is only one aspect of how Islamic and secular values can clash. Much graver matters are also at stake, like the status of women, domestic violence, the scope of the law itself and the nature of punishment for violating it.

But the way the liquor issue has begun to play out offers at least a peek at what could lie ahead in mediating the broader debate.

“Banning alcohol does not contradict the fundamentals of democracy,” said Professor Feldman. “That’s a political question of how Islamic the state should be.” The interesting thing about Iraq, he said, is that “in no other place in the Middle East is that a subject for debate, for articles, and for voting. It should be, and is, a lively topic for democratic debate.”

In part, the issue is also being sorted out within the confines of another piece of constitutional territory: federalism. “In the Kurdish areas, no one is banning alcohol,” said Professor Feldman, referring to the northern region that enjoys significant independent powers under the constitution. “In areas where Shias dominate, there is an effort.” None of which makes Iraq unique. Americans, too, have a tumultuous history involving efforts to prohibit alcohol, and even today there are dry counties in the American South.

Few voices here advocate a Western notion of strict separation of religion and state, and even avowedly secular politicians like Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who led a Sunni-influenced coalition to victory in last year’s parliamentary elections, accommodate a role for Islam in politics.

“Faith is faith,” Mr. Allawi said in a recent interview. “It is something between the individual and God. I think the inspiration for the constitution should come from the culture of the region, and an important part, a significant part, of the culture is Islam.”

These days, though, the political currents seem to be running against strict Islamic conduct, and night life in the capital has become more rambunctious and free-spirited than many people can remember. Thursday and Friday nights are one long scene of drunken revelry on Abu Nuwas Street, a riverfront promenade named for an Arab-Persian poet and legendary drinker who was gay and delighted in writing on topics that offended strict Islamists. On the more upscale Nithael Street, young women beckon men from the doorways of shiny nightclubs.

So perhaps it is a small measure of Iraq’s progress away from warring with itself that officers manning a checkpoint on Abu Nuwas Street recently seemed to worry more about drunks than about bombs.

“The government opened the nightclubs and liquor stores again because of the headache that the protesters are causing,” said one officer, Salem Abbas. “Instead of gathering and creating problems in Al Tahrir Square, now there is always fighting between the drunk people in the street and inside the clubs. We have to be in a state of emergency all night.”