A well-timed Nobel.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Nobel Peace Prize is an overtly political instrument, given to advance what the judges deem to be worthy causes around the world. The prize can thus be as much an inducement to future good works as a reward for past achievements (Yasser Arafat in 1994), or as much a rebuke to dictators as an award for those who struggle against them (Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi's prize in 1991). Seldom has this instrument been more deftly employed than in awarding Shirin Ebadi of Iran this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Though some of Ebadi's books have been translated into English, few people outside Iran had heard of her before the Nobel committee made its announcement last Friday. But by making Ebadi - a lawyer, professor and author - the first Muslim woman to receive the prize, the committee amplified her message: Islam is not incompatible with human rights.

At the same time, the prize committee delivered a slap to the ruling conservatives in the Iranian government, who imprisoned Ebadi in 2000 for distributing a tape in which a member of a vigilante group described acts of violence against reformers. Indirectly but clearly, the Nobel Peace Prize benefits President Mohammad Khatami, who has struggled against theocratic authorities to push Iran toward greater openness and pluralism.

Ebadi became one of Iran's first female judges in 1975, but was demoted to a position of legal assistant after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 - women, the new government of Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed, were too emotional to sit as judges. Ebadi stayed in Iran, opened a law practice, began writing, became a professor at the University of Tehran and emerged as one of her country's leading human rights advocates. She has been especially effective in defending the rights of women and children under Iran's version of Islamic law.

Those rights need strong advocates. A woman in Iran can't work or travel abroad without her husband's or father's approval. In court proceedings, a man's testimony is given double the weight of a woman's. A father can't be convicted of killing his child. Ebadi insists that Islam does not sanction such injustice: "If a country abuses human rights in the name of Islam, then it is not the fault of Islam."

In meeting the press after her prize was announced, she called for the release of political prisoners in Iran. She also warned against foreign intervention in Iran's affairs - a remark aimed at the United States - saying that Iranians themselves should fight for human rights in their country.

When Lech Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, the push for workers' rights in Poland and throughout the Soviet bloc took a step forward. When Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the prize in 1984, a crack appeared in South Africa's apartheid system. Now the prize - and the credibility, visibility and partial immunity to persecution that comes with it - has gone to a Muslim woman working for human rights in Iran. It's a well-timed and much needed endorsement of her work and her aspirations.