•HRES 545 IH 
which Iraq is a party, provide that ‘‘everyone’’ has ‘‘the 
right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion’’; 
Whereas recent opinion polls in Iraq show that the vast ma-
jority of Iraqis desire human rights protections, including 
the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; 
Whereas the November 15, 2003, agreement between the Co-
alition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraqi Gov-
erning Council obliges the Council to approve a Transi-
tional Administrative Law (TAL) that will be a ‘‘guar-
antee of basic rights’’ and ‘‘will also respect the Islamic 
identity of the majority of the Iraqi people, while pro-
viding guarantees of religious freedom for all Iraqis’’; 
Whereas the Iraqi Governing Council is currently considering 
a draft Transitional Administrative Law; 
Whereas drafts of the Transitional Administrative Law that 
have been made available to the public have not con-
tained provisions that explicitly guarantee to every Iraqi 
the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, 
as well as other fundamental rights and freedoms; 
Whereas in publicly available drafts of the Transitional Ad-
ministrative Law, ‘‘Islam,’’ without further definition, is 
the only specifically recognized source of legislation; 
Whereas the Transitional Administrative Law must be ap-
proved by the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional 
Authority; 
Whereas in December 2003 the Iraqi Governing Council 
passed Resolution 137 which would have, had the Admin-
istrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority approved 
it, placed matters of personal status and family law 
under the jurisdiction of religious bodies applying reli-
•HRES 545 IH 
gious law, displacing the existing civil code which applies 
equally to all Iraqis, regardless of their religion; 
Whereas the current Administrator of the Coalition Provi-
sional Authority, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, recently 
publicly stated that the Transitional Administrative Law 
‘‘should recognize the Islamic character of the majority 
of the Iraqi people and that there should be freedom of 
religion, freedom of religious practices, [and] equality be-
fore the law for all individuals’’; 
Whereas Mohsen Abdel-Hamid, the current rotating head of 
the Iraqi Governing Council and a member of the com-
mittee drafting the Transitional Administrative Law, has 
proposed making Islamic law the ‘‘principal basis’’ of leg-
islation; 
Whereas without a guarantee of the right to freedom of reli-
gion for each Iraqi, the fundamental rights and freedoms 
of all Muslims in Iraq, in particular Muslim women, 
could be determined by clerics, undermining democracy 
and the rule of law; 
Whereas despite the provision in the draft Transitional Ad-
ministrative Law guaranteeing gender equality, without a 
guarantee of the right to freedom of religion for each 
Iraqi, Iraqi Muslim women may be subject to discrimina-
tory laws regarding inheritance, marriage, and child cus-
tody, among other things; 
Whereas in some Islamic countries where the right to free-
dom of religion for each individual is denied, charges of 
blasphemy made by public officials and others have been 
used to stifle public debate and impede democratic re-
forms;
•HRES 545 IH 
Whereas the provision of rights to groups alone could, for 
members of religious minorities, limit the protection of 
freedom of religion to worship and exclude other indi-
vidual manifestations of religion or belief such as the pos-
session of religious literature, the operation of schools for 
religious education, and the carrying out of charitable ac-
tivities; and 
Whereas effective guarantees of the rights of each individual, 
including the right of each individual to freedom of 
thought, conscience, and religion, is central to ensuring 
freedom and democracy and is the cornerstone of the 
international human rights system: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Rep-
resentatives that— 
(1) a specific statement should be included in 
the Iraqi Transitional Administrative Law guaran-
teeing ‘‘everyone’’ in Iraq with ‘‘the right to freedom 
of thought, conscience, and religion’’ as affirmed in 
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 
specified in the International Covenant on Civil and 
Political Rights, to which Iraq is a party; 
(2) a statement should be included in the Tran-
sitional Administrative Law specifically identifying 
the principles of democracy, pluralism, rule of law, 
and Iraq’s international obligations as fundamental 
sources for legislation, in addition to the mention of 
Islam that is alone currently cited in publicly avail-
•HRES 545 IH 
able drafts of the Transitional Administrative Law; 
and 
(3) an explicit commitment should be made in 
the Transitional Administrative Law that Iraq will 
respect and ensure the rights guaranteed by the 
international treaties and conventions to which it is 
a party, including the International Covenant on 
Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights. 
Æ