THERE was no direct threat, but the implication was clear: Allaa Hassan, owner of the down-at-heel Najah cinema in Baghdad, arrived at work two weeks ago and found a letter posted up outside the front of his box office.

It quoted the Koran, suggesting that it was against Islam to show romantic films, and was signed by a few young Muslims. “It said: ‘We are an Islamic country,’” said Mr Hassan, who was deeply disturbed by the incident.

The seedy alleyway outside his cinema advertises his films with tatty posters for such Western productions as Last Action Hero and the James Bond A View to a Kill, as well as a host of Arabic films.

“No one came to talk to us. We are not working against the law. We want to run the cinema without a problem. I hope the leaders of the mosques come to talk to us to tell us what is allowed,” Mr Hassan said diplomatically, frightened, like most Iraqis, of criticising the religious authorities.

But then his frustrations burst out: “They talk about the new freedoms, but where is the freedom if I am threatened because of the film I show?” Iraqis, he said, just did not not understand what freedom was about.

“The people say ‘freedom, freedom’, but they don’t know the meaning of it,” he said.

“Before, we had Saddam, now we have the imams. Saddam wouldn’t let us do things, and now the imams won’t. Where is the freedom?”

Mr Hassan’s frustrations are becoming increasingly common among more secular Iraqis as the mosques take advantage of the free-for-all of post-liberation Iraq to cajole the country into a stricter Islamic way of life. Many large pictures of Saddam have been painted over with pictures of venerated Islamic leaders.

With the Iraqi judicial system still in chaos, mosques have been setting up Islamic courts. Alcohol-sellers, distilleries, brothels, music shops and cinemas have all been targeted either by “advice” from religious leaders, or violence from extremists.

Until the war, Allaa Records, in a heavily Shia district of Baghdad, used to sell Western music and kept a small secret stock of Islamic songs banned by Saddam. After the regime’s fall, a painted banner appeared outside the shop, declaring: “Please will owners of record shops stop selling music that is bad for Muslims, and change their music to that permitted for Islam.”

It was signed by the Hawza school of Islam, a powerful sect that runs the local al-Khardum mosque. Allaa Salim, the record shop’s owner, felt that he had little choice: “We stopped selling foreign songs, and now we just sell Islamic songs. All the music shops around here have changed,” he said, also clearly frightened of the religious authorities.

It is not violence that he fears if he sells pop music, but becoming a social outcast. “Some will tell me it is a shame for me,” he said. “They won’t hurt me, but I don’t want people to talk about me like that.”

In the street markets, vendors sell pictures of various imams and sheikhs, including the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the former leader of theocratic Iran.

At the al-Khardum mosque, Sheikh Raaid al-Khardumi al-Saady, a particularly venerated Islamic leader, was open about what they were trying to do. “Every Islamic country wants to remove these irreligious things,” he said. “They have been allowed for 35 years, and we want to remove them gradually . . . We talk to them, we don’t do it by force, and some of them close.”

Many mosques have set up vice committees to persuade local people to follow a stricter observance of Islam. In the slums of Baghdad known as Sadr City — formerly Saddam City — vice committees have persuaded many alcohol shops and brothels to close. But Islamic militants sometimes do more than just talk.

Basra, Iraq’s second city, has become alcohol-free after a series of arson attacks and murders against the city’s alcohol-sellers. Many women are frightened of walking around without headscarves because they are harassed in the street.

One Iraqi said simply: “I don’t like these people: we are in the 21st century and they want us to live in the 7th century. Iraq is finished.”

Courts revival

Under Saddam many mosques operated underground Islamic courts to resolve disputes between people and businesses, and such courts are now thriving and expanding.

People queue at al-Hikma mosque in Sadr City every Monday and Thursday morning for its Islamic court, which was closed by Saddam.

The two judges deal with about 25 cases a week, from property disputes to allowing people to get married. They offer a simple chance to resolve disputes that would not be available to them any other way. The court has no legal standing in Iraq.

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