Iraq’s Booze Blues

Statue of famed Abbasid era poet and renowned drinker Abu Al-Nuwas

Alcohol policy threatens Chaldean traditions and business

By Adhid Miri, PhD

The history of alcohol in Iraq stretches thousands of years, back to the invention of beer in ancient Mesopotamia. Their ruins are full of hundreds of clay tablets that record the methods and means of making and drinking beer; some even depict drink councils. Cups and vessels for drinking and manufacturing wine are also frequently found among the artifacts.

Ancient Iraqis were intimately acquainted with drinks made from barley and wine extracted from palm dates. They considered drinking alcohol a condition of civilization.

Ferida Beer

Recently, Iraq’s Parliament passed a law forbidding the import, production, or sale of alcoholic beverages. Anyone who violates the mandate will be fined between 10 million Iraqi dinars (nearly $7,000) and 25 million dinars (more than $17,000).

The enforcement of the law starts from the date of its publication in the February 2023 official Iraqi Gazette and encompasses all shops selling alcoholic beverages, including tourist sites, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, and even duty-free shops at Iraqi airports.

The subject of alcohol is complicated in Iraq due to a conflict in decree. The constitution prohibits the issuance of laws that contradict Islamic law, even while it stipulates the guarantee of personal freedoms.

This is not a new debate. In 2016, the Iraqi Parliament passed a law banning the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. At that time, the ruling provoked a wave of widespread controversy, and it was not enforced due to the reluctance of some political parties and the president’s refusal to sign it into law. So, what happened to cause this law that had remained dormant for seven years to be turned into an enforceable law?

It turns out one of the deputies filed a lawsuit before the Federal Supreme Court to oblige the President of the Republic to send one of the laws that must be published in the official Gazette. As a result, the Presidency of the Republic stressed the publication of any law that was voted on and neglected or left unpublished. Thus, the law woke from its 7-year long sleep and returned to be enforced.

History

Ironically, alcohol appears in the oldest myths about civilization in Iraq as well as in its Islamic history. Historically, wine was considered a divine drink that accompanied humans from the moment of their creation.

The Muslim scientist Jabir bin Hayyan, who lived and worked in Kufa, developed a distillation machine, and used it to distill perfume and kohl; the scientist Abu Bakr Al-Razi later used it to distill alcohol. The name “alcohol” comes from the Arabic word “kohl,” which is still used today in most languages.

The Iraqis, then, are credited with inventing distillation and discovering fermented beverages.

Imam Abu Hanifah (699-767), a Muslim jurist and theologian whose systematization of Islamic legal doctrine was acknowledged as one of the four canonical schools of Islamic law, argued on behalf of alcohol. Many legal doctrines had accumulated as a result of trying to apply Islamic norms to legal problems. The disagreements in these doctrines led to the development of a uniform code.

Clay tablet with instructions for making beer, dating back to 3100 BC

Abu Hanifah scrutinized the doctrines with his students, discussing every side of the law. They applied reason and concluded that wine was only forbidden if it was intoxicating and made from grapes. If it was made from barley, honey, dates, wheat, or figs, it was not forbidden. This became known as “the doctrine of the people of Iraq concerning alcohol.”

Religion and Alcohol

Although Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol, it has always been available in Iraq’s larger cities. Mainly run by Christians, these shops are closed for business during the Shia holy month of Muharram.

Accommodating and respecting religious beliefs is one thing, but shutting the business down permanently is another. This move has angered many in the country’s Christian community who rely on the business. These same minority communities are also famous for making wine and arak in small, mostly primitive factories.

It’s unclear how strictly the law would be enforced, and it could end up being struck down by the supreme court, but its announcement has raised an outcry that could be heard all the way in the States.

Previously, sale of alcohol in Iraq was based on the Spiritual Beverages Law No. 3 of 1931, in addition to several decisions of the Revolutionary Command Council. During Saddam Hussein’s rule of Iraq, Muslims were prohibited from selling alcoholic beverages, but non-Muslims could do so if they had a license.

The Iraqi parliament’s ban on the production, import and sale of alcoholic beverages of all kinds has raised a broad protest among religious minorities, individuals, and civil societies. The debate revolves around three main points: non-Muslim minorities’ fear of the Islamization of the state, controversy over the relationship between religion and state, and attempts by parties of political Islam to control the black market for alcohol.

In addition, critics consider that the law explicitly intersects with most constitutional articles related to personal freedoms, including the article that states that “every individual has the right to personal privacy in a manner that does not contradict the rights of others and public morals.”

Furthermore, some view the law as a “legal mechanism” to cut off the livelihoods and restrict the lives of most of those working in this field, who are often from the Christian and Yazidi religious minorities, and therefore it may encourage the rest of them to leave the country permanently. 

They challenge the law, claiming it is part of a war against religious minorities that aims to force them out of the country through exclusion, marginalization, and harassment policies. Legal reformists are afraid for how the civil state, agreed upon in the constitution, is going to be. They fear this tight grip on personal freedom would be a prelude toward altering the state’s laws to apply Sharia law, such as in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Meanwhile, other critics are focusing on the law’s economic dimensions. One main importer made the claim, “The value of imported alcohol in 2015 reached over $800 million, and other quantities of alcohol were smuggled into Iraq with an estimated value of more than $300 million.”

Market conditions remain relatively favorable for a handful of well-connected pro-Iranian militias and underground organizations who can take advantage of various factors that ensure that access to a functioning market is on the table only for the lucky few.

Conclusion

The executive branch could move to have the law overturned on procedural or other grounds, and an appeal to Iraq’s Supreme Court is expected.

Bills like this appear to serve the people on the surface, while it covers up the ambitions of the thieves and their plans to seize public money and becomes the means for enabling the heads of corruption and financial sharks to loot under the shadow of the law.

All national political forces, independent representatives, social activists, and legal minds must reject such autocratic laws and blanket booze bans and prevent their passage - to preserve public money, citizens’ rights and the interests of the country.

This may be a temporary halt in Iraq’s booze era, but hopefully, it is not its obituary.

Sources: ITP Media Group, Al-Arabia News, Iraqi News, the Arab World, the Guardian, Al-Monitor, Associated Press, CNN, Writers, and Reporters: Saad Saloum, Hayder Al-Sarraf, Amer Salem, Arwa Damon, Judy Woodruff, Brice Laine, Jay Brooks, Ahmed Mubarak, Alaa Al-Lami, Fouad Misho.