It was 11 a.m., and Baghdad's first Islamic court was in session, Sheik Abbas Rubai presiding.
Under a florid chandelier in the Hikma Mosque, headquarters for Shiite Muslim clergy running the slum now known as Sadr City, Rubai listened with little expression to the petitioners' arguments, according to some of those present. At issue, they said, was whether seven tenants could remain in concrete and cinder-block shops built by the former Baath Party government on the property of a nearby mosque. The head of the mosque wanted them to make way for a religious school. The store owners, some of whom had been there for years, protested.
"Why can't we pay rent to the mosque?" Hussein Ali recalled asking Rubai at the session, convened two weeks ago on a floor dressed in rugs, some of them genuine Persians, others cheap monochrome counterparts. "What about compensation?" he recalled another owner asking.
The no-frills session lasted less than a half-hour; judgment was swift. No compensation, no compromise. On an envelope-size piece of paper, Rubai wrote his verdict: "We give the brothers who own the shops one month to evacuate."
Partly in response to the disorder in Baghdad since Saddam Hussein's government collapsed April 9, partly in response to a vision of a more religious Muslim society, the Shiite clergy -- perhaps the best-organized force in the unsettled capital besides the U.S. occupation -- have moved deftly to create de facto institutions of justice, ruling on cases from divorce to property disputes. At the same time, they have begun enforcing their version of Islamic law, warning shops not to sell alcoholic beverages and theaters not to show risque movies.
A senior U.S. official here acknowledged concern about the clergy's influence in handing down justice. But U.S. occupation officials, struggling to restore basic civil institutions, said a new legal code to replace law decreed under Hussein would likely wait until a temporary Iraqi authority is put into place.
Rubai's court, complete with summonses featuring calligraphy and a letterhead, began delivering verdicts this month. Answering a call from a leading cleric last week, other clergy have set up committees "for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice" -- traditional Islamic morals police. In the slum alleys of Sadr City and the shady streets of wealthy neighborhoods on the other side of town, clerics have delivered warnings to movie theaters, video shops and liquor stores they deem illegal, sending a chill through the long-secular city.
"What can we do? We had to accept it," said Ali, 46, about the verdict handed down in Rubai's court. "There's chaos. There's no civilian court." Salman Gheilan, 36, a blacksmith standing nearby, added, "The mosques are in charge."
To the clergy, the work answers the needs of often-appreciative residents bewildered by the city's overnight transformation from relentless Baath control to a free-for-all U.S. occupation. But they also cast the moves as a struggle for a far greater prize: the identity of a city buffeted by contrary winds -- Americans working to set up a secular state and the clergy's desire for a more devout society that they would guide.
"We're very busy," said Sheik Hadi Darraji, a leader of one of the vice committees. "We're trying to create a new system."
Khalid Hamid, a lanky 27-year-old Iraqi with a trimmed beard, came to the Hikma Mosque with a simple question: How could he get a marriage license for his 17-year-old sister and her 19-year-old fiance? He arrived a few minutes before 9 a.m., which according to a leaflet he saw in another mosque was when Rubai's court would begin. Rubai did not show for another hour, but no matter.
"I can wait for four hours," Hamid said.
In the mosque's courtyard, beside a blue-tiled fountain used for ritual washing before prayers, crowds had already gathered. They flocked to the entering clerics, dressed in pressed dishdashas, or long tunics, and flowing black robes. Creased and tattered notes signed by local sheiks were thrust at the clerics, asking for small stipends for a fan, refrigerator or air conditioner. Others in the crowd pleaded for help reclaiming cars and deposits from looted banks or to force squatters from homes abandoned during the war.
Rubai, a bald man in black sandals and black-rimmed glasses, entered inconspicuously but was soon pointed out.
"Excuse me," Hamid said, "I need to ask you about a marriage certificate."
The court session had begun. As with many legal questions, Rubai deferred to the Shiite Muslim seminary in the holy city of Najaf to which clergy look for guidance.
"You can get it done in Najaf," Rubai said. "The judges there can arrange everything very properly and very clearly."
"But I live in Baghdad," Hamid said, frustrated at the prospect of a long trip for a process once mundane. "It's far away. I can't take my sister and her fiance there."
He paused, then asked, "We have a sheik in our neighborhood, Sheik Aid, can he do it?"
"Yes, he's very good, he can do it," Rubai said. But he insisted that a trip to Najaf was still in order. "He can make the certificate, and you can take him to Najaf as a witness to testify that he made the certificate."
With that, the first case of the day was over, and despite the hassle of travel, Hamid said he was satisfied.
"If I didn't like it," he said, "I wouldn't come all the way here to get advice."
Since the notices went up this month announcing Baghdad's first Islamic court, Rubai has heard about 10 cases -- a woman asking how much she should receive in alimony, people eager to reclaim homes confiscated under Hussein's government, an Iraqi who insisted his neighbors stole his AK-47 assault rifle and guards accused of stealing looted goods returned to a mosque.
Under Islamic law, circumstantial evidence cannot convict someone, and Rubai complained that witnesses were not always forthcoming. "We can't take confessions by torture," he said with a knowing smile. Even more difficult, the 39-year-old judge said, was his lack of power to enforce decisions. He relies on the respect and reputation of the clergy.
"I try to satisfy both sides," he said. "In any case, there's a fair solution."
A student in Najaf for seven years, Rubai took part in underground Islamic courts under Hussein's government, a risky endeavor that he said caused one judge to be executed and three to be arrested. Now in the open, he said, the clergy will inaugurate another court in Baghdad and others elsewhere in Iraq. As the notices have spread through the capital, he said, he is receiving more and more inquiries.
"The Islamic law court is based on an effective and simple system," Rubai said. "Everyone wants to adhere to its decisions."
In the wake of the government's collapse, the clerics' work in places such as Sadr City has dramatically boosted their standing. While secular residents fear a more intolerant Baghdad, residents like Hamid give their full support to the clergy's efforts to restore order to the streets, provide food and money to the people and bring about a more religious society.
"Did you have mass graves? Did you have jails underground? We need a just ruler," Hamid said to the nods of those gathered around him. "An Islamic government rules by Islam, not like Saddam. Under Saddam, when you prayed, he'd snatch you and put you in jail."
And the Americans? "They came as liberators. They said liberators, not occupiers, so they should leave the choice to us."
In the past week, clerics have seemed emboldened by words like Hamid's, becoming more aggressive in delivering justice based on Islamic law. At Friday prayers last week, a leading cleric, Sheik Kadhim Abadi, called on the clergy to form vice committees to respond to the legacy of Hussein's rule and the threat of "corrupt, foreign thoughts" brought by U.S. forces.
The clergy have set up four committees at Hikma Mosque, each with four or five people. They have sought to rid the neighborhood of alcohol and pornography, and to urge women -- often by stopping them in the streets -- to don the veil and not wear cosmetics.
Sayyid Ali Dinainawi, who has authority over the committees and said he cooperates with Rubai, boasted that the men have already succeeded in shutting down liquor stores in Sadr City. The capital's nine movie theaters have all had visits, usually after evening prayers, and have been warned against showing foreign films and others the Islamic committeemen deem indecent.
At one theater, a leaflet posted at the entrance said, "This is the last warning."
"What's their concern with this?" said Alaa Hassan, manager of the dilapidated Najah Theater in downtown Baghdad. "They're not a government. They're Muslims, we're Muslims. We're not infidels. We're not criminals."
One of the movies playing at Hassan's theater was "A Woman for All Men." The advertisement says, "She's too much woman for any one man." Hassan acknowledged that there were brief nude scenes in some of the films, but said it was of no concern to the clergy. As he spoke, his face turned red, and he recalled an Iraqi proverb that says a mother gives birth to an Iraqi who is free.
"I have a saying for you: A mother gives birth to an Iraqi who is shackled with heavy chains," he said.
"Our language is not threatening," countered Darraji, a stocky 30-year-old cleric who heads one of the vice committees at Hikma Mosque. "Our language is dialogue, speaking peacefully with them. They need to know this city is an Islamic city."
Darraji cited, as an example, one of the two liquor stores operating in Sadr City, both now shut down. After a visit by Darraji's committee, the owner sent a representative demanding compensation for the $80 he paid the government for a liquor license. Darraji said the committee refused and, in a subsequent visit, the owner said he didn't need the money and would close the store.
"He changed his mind without any pressure," Darraji said.
Darraji suggested that the liquor stores and cinemas catered to those loyal to Hussein's secular government. Women, he said, were urged to give up the veil, and prostitution ran rife. In his words were echoes of the reaction in other countries where Islamic movements took power -- Iran in 1979, for example, or Afghanistan under the Taliban.
"They were strong with the regime. They supplied them," he said. "Now they have to know there is no regime."
Sitting in the Islamic Youth Center, under portraits of Shiite Muslim saints and Koranic verses inscribed on newly painted white walls, he said the same went for the U.S. occupation authorities and the kind of secularism he believed they were trying to instill in Iraq.
"We have warned them against these things. We will not stand by and watch," he said. "Our goal is to maintain the morality of society. The biggest disaster will be a lack of morality and immoral behavior in the name of freedom and democracy."