In the new Iraq, it's as well to check just what religion will allow you to do

A MIRRORED ceiling in your bedroom is fine, as is driving an American car or having a facelift. Eating caviare, however, is forbidden, as is a quiet chess game.

So goes the advice dished out to millions of Iraqi Shi’ites by the nearest thing their country has to an online agony uncle - the website of the country’s most senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani.

From the rights and wrongs of wearing aftershave through to the age-old question of whether men and women can ever be ‘just friends’ the bearded 70-year-old’s eclectic pronouncements cover nearly every aspect of life. Friendships between men and women are frowned upon because "man is not immune from sin". Caviare is off the menu because Shia Islam forbids the eating of fish without scales. And chess is forbidden because the act of checkmate is one that only Allah can bring about.

Yet with Iraq’s newly-elected government likely to be dominated by Shi’ite religious parties, the website highlights fears that such edicts may no longer just apply to a section of the population.

Secular Iraqis and members of the country’s Sunni minority, which follows a less proscriptive brand of Islam, claim it shows the potential for the Shi’ite clerics to start meddling.

Qassim Ghali, of the secular Iraqi Omar party, said: "The Shias always like to ask their priests what they can and cannot do, while the Sunnis are rather more liberal.

"They are playing a clever game. They are reassuring everybody at first that Iraq will not become like Iran, but eventually they will be asking women to cover their faces and banning alcohol.

Iranian born Ayatollah Sistani is a hugely influential figure among Iraq’s majority Shia population, and it was thanks largely to his endorsement that the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi Unity List - also known as the Sistani List - did so well at the polls.

According to figures from the end of last week, the party has already won about 2 million votes, compared with 1 million for the Kurdish parties and 650,000 for prime minister Ayad Allawi’s Iraqi List party.

Provisional results from 12 of the 18 provinces show Shi’ite religious groups winning easily over secular tickets in much of the country. Final results from the more closely watched national race for the 274-member National Assembly are expected today or tomorrow.

The Unity List’s moderate members insist the religious codes of conduct outlined on the website will not be enforced by law. But while Sistani officially backs the ‘quietist’ school of Islam, which says clerics should stay out of politics, Shi’ites traditionally expect priests to have a much bigger say in their daily lives.

As a result, the e-mailed question and answer section at www.sistani.org resembles a cross between a problem page, an episode of Oprah Winfrey and a Catholic confession box. Some questions answered by Sistani’s advisers deal partly with the better-known strictures of the faith - such as dress and interfaith relationships.

A woman for example, can wear trousers as long as they are not of a cut that will "instigate strangers". Marriage with Sunnis, meanwhile, is permissible as long as people "do not fear being misled". But other questions show how, for observant Shias, everyday life is full of potential pitfalls. Can one eat a hen that has drunk from the same pool of water as a dog - given that canines are considered dirty creatures? Answer: "It is permitted".

"Is it OK to wear gold tie pins or cuff links? Answer: "Man should not use gold ornaments." Why? "It is not important to ask the reason." Among the more esoteric questions come from Iraqi Shias living in the west.

One asks: "Is playing cricket forbidden? And what about watching cricket and other sports on television?" The reply: "There is no objection in it."

Another is told he told he can eat at McDonalds, so long as he sticks to milkshakes and French fries and avoids offerings containing non-halal meat.

The most intriguing inquiries are sexual, the anonymity of e-mail affording a frankness that would probably be difficult before an imam. "Is having an orgy permissible under the Koran?" asks one inquirer, only to be told bluntly: "It’s forbidden."

"Can husband and wife have sex with each other while looking at each other in a mirror?" asks another "It’s permissible," comes the reply.

For the Shias at the more secular end of the Iraqi Unity list, the website’s minutiae of dos and don’ts apply no more than they would to Sunnis or Christians.

But for the more devout, they are to be taken seriously.

Violence in Iraq mounted yesterday ahead of the voting results. A car bomb exploded in front of a hospital in Musayyib, a mostly Shi’ite town south of Baghdad, killing 17 and wounding 21. The attacks came a day after 23 were killed in two attacks aimed at Shi’ites.