Iranian feminist wins Nobel peace prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2003 has been awarded to Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist deeply committed to women's rights and to battling religious fundamentalism. The enthusiastic response to this award among women in the Muslim world, and especially in Iran, has once again revealed that supporting the struggle for women's liberation in the Muslim world is critical in any effort to battle the deep crises of our world.

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Before the Nobel announcement was made, Iran's high court had called for the execution of Afsaneh Noroozi, a woman who had dared to stab her rapist, a police chief. The head of Iran's judiciary, Mortazavi, had also been directly involved in the prison murder of Zahra Kazemi, a woman photojournalist working for a Canadian newspaper, who died in police custody while covering the June student protests and sit-ins by families of political prisoners. The announcement of Ebadi's Nobel Prize was a sudden unexpected boost to the campaigns to protest these acts.

Ebadi is most deserving of this award. As a law professor at Tehran University and a practicing attorney, she has put her life on the line to defend women's rights. She founded the Association for Support of Children's Rights, and the Centre for the Defenders of Human Rights, which provides free legal aid to the victims of human rights abuses.

Prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she was appointed the first woman judge in Iran and yet remained critical of the Shah's regime. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, she was removed from her position due to the imposition of Islamic Sharia laws. She was also denied the right to practice law for seven years.

Ebadi has defended the rights of women against domestic violence, "honor killings," arbitrary male initiated divorce, and for child custody and compensation after divorce. In a Sharia-based legal system the marriage age for a girl is 13 (it used to be 9) and a woman's testimony in a court is considered half the value of that of a man.

Ebadi believes that an enlightened interpretation of the Quran based on modern circumstances can lead to major changes in all laws relating to women's rights and human rights. Furthermore, the abolition of judicial penalties, such as stoning and amputation of limbs, is top on her list of priorities. While she is a practicing Muslim, she is not an advocate of political Islam and believes in the separation of religion and state.

In 1999 after student activists were beaten and murdered in a government sponsored attack on their dormitory at Tehran University, Ebadi threw herself into their defense. Her vigorous defense of students landed her in solitary confinement.

Upon hearing the news that she had won the Nobel peace prize, the elated and surprised Ebadi called for the release of all political prisoners in Iran. She appeared without a headscarf at an international press conference and emphasised that the prize belongs to all who are fighting for human rights in Iran. When asked about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she emphasised that while people in the Middle East need international support to create democracies, "no country is allowed to invade another in the name of democracy, since human rights cannot be promoted through tanks and weapons but through the people of a country."

The mouthpieces of the Islamic Republic have tried to downplay the significance of Ebadi's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, but tens of thousands of women and men gathered at Mehrabad airport to greet her return to Tehran with flowers and placards. At her first news conference in Tehran she announced that she has agreed to take on the case of the murdered journalist Zahra Kazemi. She also said: "I am proclaiming the Iranian people's message of peace and friendship to the world. We are a peace loving people. We hate violence. We condemn terror. We are not hostile toward other religions."

The next day, a woman member of the parliament announced a delay in the planned execution of Afsaneh Noroozi, in order to allow for further investigation. Women's rights activists are continuing to fight for her complete exoneration and release.

This is not the first time that Iranian women have been in the forefront of movements for social transformation. During the 1906-11 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, women formed the first committees for women's rights in the Middle East. Many supported the Constitutional Movement's demand for reducing the clergy's powers. Seventy-three years later, when Ayatollah Khomeini decreed compulsory veiling during the 1979 revolution, tens of thousands of women marched on International Women's Day to protest this counter-revolutionary direction and held sitins against the forced expulsion of women, like Ebadi, from the courts.

It remains to be seen what further impact Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize will have on the anti-fundamentalist and feminist movements in Iran and in the Muslim world. There is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of women have been energised and encouraged by this recognition of their struggle.

Source: News & Letters, November 2003