It has been nearly 30 years since she got married, but Iraqi legislator Samira Musawi still bristles at what she considers the ultimate indignity: a law requiring witnesses to certify the rite. She and her husband-to-be grabbed a couple of strangers, gave them each about $10 and were legally wed.

“I didn’t even know these people; they could have been thugs,” Musawi said of the men who validated the 1979 civil ceremony in a west Baghdad court.

That memory is one reason Musawi, who heads parliament’s Women, Family and Childhood Committee, supports Article 41, a clause in Iraq’s interim constitution that supporters say will prevent state meddling in civil affairs by allowing Iraqis to marry, divorce, decide inheritances and settle other personal issues according to their religious sect. For example, under Shiite law, no witnesses are required for a marriage, but Sunnis require two.

But a fight over the article’s potential effect has presented a stumbling block to lawmakers trying to finalise a constitution by year’s end. Article 41 is just one line in the 16-page document, but to critics, it is the worst.

Opponents, including women’s rights activists and legal scholars, say the one poorly worded sentence opens the door to rule by draconian interpretations of Islamic law that could sanction the stoning of adulterous women, allow underage girls to be forced into marriage and permit men to abandon their wives by declaring, “I divorce you,” three times.

In the southern city of Basra, there are already signs of religious extremism being used to rein in women. Police say gangs enforcing their idea of Islamic law have killed 15 women in the last month.

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