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A stroll through the Baghdad Book Fair last month was a lesson in today's cultural norms in Iraq. The books gold-embossed, neatly arrayed were almost all religious, and most of the customers were men.

But in the middle of the white pavilion, a woman's voice rang out loud and strong. Fawzia al-Babakhan, a lawyer, delivered a blistering critique of a proposed law that would rewrite the rules for matters such as marriage and inheritance according to Shiite Islamic law.

Most controversially, the law, proposed by former Justice Minister Hassan al-Shammari and passed by the Cabinet, would consider girls adult and thus ready for marriage at 9 years old.

"We know that the state of women in Iraq is getting worse," says Babakhan. "Despite the intellectual openness that women had benefited from following the American occupation and the removal of the regime."

Since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, she says, there's been Internet access, a growing civil society, more opportunities to travel. But conservative religious politics are also on the rise. She says she's seeing women's rights regress.

Parliament Must Approve

The proposed legislation is known as the Jaafari law, after a school of Islam by that name. It still needs to be passed by Iraq's parliament. If it happens at all, it won't come until a new government is formed after results come out from last month's elections.

And if passed, the law would be voluntary people could choose whether to use its tenets to write wills and marriage contracts. But activists worry it would still be imposed on people. And Babakhan, the lawyer, is concerned about the proposal's provision that it apply only to Iraq's Shiite majority not Sunni Muslims or other minorities.

"This, of course, nurtures sectarianism and divisions in society," she says. Iraq has lost tens of thousands to sectarian fighting in the last 10 years.

Many analysts say that the law is unlikely to be passed by parliament, and is mostly a political pitch to shore up support with conservative Shiites. In Iraq's hinterlands, tribal traditions sometimes allow violence against women and early marriage.

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Iraq Debates Law That Would Allow Men To Marry 9-Year-Old Girls