Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize Highlights Tension in Iran

by Ziba Mir-Hosseini

from: MERIP

(Ziba Mir-Hosseini is research associate at the Center for Islamic and

Middle Eastern Law of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the

University of London.)

The decision to award the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, the

intrepid Iranian human rights lawyer and former judge, took everyone by

surprise -- not least Ebadi herself. On the morning of October 10, when the

award was announced, the Nobel winner was about to leave Paris, where she

had been attending a conference on Iranian cinema, and the news forced her

to postpone her departure for Tehran. In Iran, meanwhile, news of the award

seems to have stumped conservative forces in the government, who initially

tried to ignore it. State-run radio stations controlled by the conservatives

waited hours to announce the prize, before finally according it the briefest

of mentions at the end of an afternoon news bulletin. The newspapers and

websites of Iran's reformist movement, however, instantly hailed the

announcement in Oslo as the international community's recognition of the

peaceful struggle of Iranians for democracy and human rights.

Much coverage of Ebadi's award has speculated on the message being sent by

the Nobel committee to the Bush administration: contrary to the implications

of Washington's "axis of evil" rhetoric, reform in Iran must come from

within. Ebadi herself underscored this message when she spoke out against

Western intervention. But more important in the short term may be how her

Nobel Peace Prize, by highlighting contradictions in the Islamic Republic of

Iran and within the "reformist" camp, strengthens a particular set of forces

in Iran's long and arduous transition from theocracy to democracy.

TWO RECEPTIONS

When Ebadi arrived at Tehran airport on October 14, she received a hero's

welcome. Several non-governmental organizations and independent

associations, such as an association of writers and a group of lawyers, had

formed a welcoming committee headed by Fariborz Ra'is-Dana, an outspoken

secular reformist. A crowd of many thousands, mostly women sporting white

headscarves (covering one's hair is obligatory in Iran) and holding white

flowers, filled the terminal and the roadway leading to the airport. On the

tarmac, Ebadi was met by members of the welcoming committee, as well as two

of President Mohammad Khatami's deputies, and several members of the

Parliament (Majles), including all the women members. Zahra Eshraqi --

granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and wife of Mohammad Reza

Khatami, brother of the president and leader of Mosharekat, the largest

reformist party in the Majles -- placed a garland of flowers around Ebadi's

neck.

The next day, Jomhuri-ye Islami, the most hard-line conservative newspaper,

blasted Eshraqi's gesture as a betrayal of her grandfather, and declared

that Khomeini would certainly have condemned his granddaughter if he were

alive. Eshraqi was surely manipulated by her husband, who, in a desperate

attempt to save his embattled party, had forced his wife into making the

despicable gesture, the newspaper concluded. In a telephone interview with

the reformist online journal Emrooz on October 19, Eshraqi defended her

action, attributing the criticism to the patriarchal mindset that "for

everything, women get orders from their husbands" because they lack the

power of discernment. In the week following the human rights lawyer's warm

reception at the airport, Friday prayer leaders denounced Ebadi and her

Nobel Prize from every pulpit in Iran. In Qom, the heart of clerical power,

a statement was read out linking the award to the continuing attempts of

foreign powers to weaken the Islamic Republic. The Nobel Peace Prize for

Ebadi was, the statement told the congregation, "the latest plot of the

Global Arrogance [the current variation on 'the Great Satan'] to undermine

Islam."

EXEMPLAR OF STRUGGLE

Such diverse reactions to Ebadi's prize are clearly indicative of the

tensions that divide her country, where Islamism -- that is, the use of

Islam as an ideology and the demand for application of Islamic shari'a as

the law of the land -- has lost its popular appeal. The 1979 revolution,

which merged political and religious powers in Iran, transformed "Islam"

from an ideology of opposition into one of state power. The

post-revolutionary state embarked on the enforced Islamization of law and

society, a process which had especially severe consequences for women. In

practice, the implementation of shari'a amounted to mandating an "Islamic"

dress code for women, enforcing gender segregation in public spaces,

dismantling the legal reforms of the deposed Pahlavi regime and applying an

outdated patriarchal model of social relations, defined by pre-modern

Islamic legal texts, in courts dealing with penal cases and family disputes.

The results were so out of touch with women's aspirations, not to mention

the realities of Iranians' lives and their sense of justice, that 20 years

later they helped to unleash a popular reform movement, major currents of

which seek a withdrawal of religion from its fusion with state authority.

This reform movement emerged in the aftermath of the 1997 presidential

election, when Iranians voted en masse for Khatami, a cleric who ran on a

platform of tolerance and the rule of law. Since then, the reformists --

both inside and outside the structures of the state -- have been trying to

forge a democratic and pluralist political culture, aided by a vocal press

but in the face of intense and at times violent opposition from conservative

theocratic forces. The demand of women for equality and gender justice has

been an integral part of the reformist movement. Shirin Ebadi is a prominent

voice among those who are trying to reconcile Islam with discourses of

democracy and human rights.

Ebadi's life in many ways exemplifies the struggles of women in Iran in the

years since the 1979 revolution. Born in 1947, she graduated in 1969 from

Tehran University's Faculty of Law, and later became one of the first women

judges in Iranian history. She lost her post in 1979 when the

post-revolutionary regime launched its program of Islamization of

institutions. At the time, clerical wisdom argued that women were unfit to

be judges, as they were too emotional to render decisions based on reason

and legal principle. In 1984, Ebadi took early retirement and began working

for private legal firms. She obtained a license to practice as an attorney

in 1992, and soon emerged as the leading figure in the Iranian human rights

movement. Along with other women, in 1994 Ebadi founded the Society for

Protecting the Rights of the Child, which has lobbied the parliament to

introduce legal reforms in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the

Child. In 1997, she was the lawyer for the divorced mother of Aryan, a six

year-old girl who died in her father's house after being abused by her

stepmother and brother. For years, Aryan's mother, who had evidence of the

abuse, had petitioned the courts for custody, but she had been denied

because the courts' interpretation of shari'a granted custodial preference

to the father in cases of divorce. The case aroused public outrage, allowing

Ebadi, in effect, to put these restrictive custody rules on trial. The trial

led to amendment of the custody law in 1998.

Ebadi has also defended a number of victims of human rights violations,

taking up cases that few other lawyers would have dared to touch. In 1998,

she represented the families of dissident writers and intellectuals who had

been serially assassinated by "rogue elements" of the Ministry of

Information, and in 1999, she sued on behalf of the family of a young man

who died when police and plainclothes militia stormed a Tehran University

student dormitory in July. Her outspoken defense of human rights has

antagonized the Iranian judiciary, the primary institutional arm of rigid

conservatism in the regime, and hard-line jurists ordered her arrested in

June 2000. Accused of producing and distributing a videotape that allegedly

"disturbs public opinion" by implicating certain senior officials in

atrocities against reformist personalities and organizations, she was tried

in closed court, given a suspended sentence and banned from practicing law.

An appeals court later reduced her sentence to a fine.

A STATE AT WAR WITH ITSELF

Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize comes at a time when the reform movement in Iran

is under a great deal of pressure. The public has lost hope and patience

with Khatami and his allies in government and the Majles, who have failed to

fulfill their campaign promises. The reformist front's political and

legislative moves to bring tangible change in the structure of power have so

far been frustrated by those who safeguard the theocratic side of the

state -- especially the judiciary, who see themselves as answerable only to

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini's successor as Supreme Leader, and the

Council of Guardians, an elite group which, though unelected, has the

authority to vet or veto all legislation passed by the Majles. The Council

has vetoed 90 percent of the laws proposed by the Sixth Majles since it

convened in June 2000. Among the rejected bills were proposals to change the

restrictive press laws, ban the use of torture in prisons, raise the minimum

age of marriage, abolish the unilateral right to divorce for men, expand

women's access to divorce and, most recently, join the UN Convention on the

Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a cause

for which Ebadi also fought. The frustration of the reformists has created

not so much a stalemate, or even a "dual state," as a state at war with

itself, where members of the unelected bodies controlled by the Supreme

Leader see their survival in power as contingent on preventing the elected

bodies dominated by the reformists from carrying out their agenda.

At stake is the legacy of the 1979 revolution, and at war are two different

notions of Islam based on two different readings of its sacred texts. One is

a legalistic and absolutist Islam, premised on the notion of "duties," which

makes no concession to contemporary realities and the aspirations of

Muslims. The other is a pluralistic and tolerant Islam, premised on the

notion of "rights" as advocated by modern democratic ideals.

It is this tolerant and pluralist Islam with which Shirin Ebadi, as a human

rights lawyer working outside the structures of state power, is aligned, and

it is this Islam for which she went to prison. With the Nobel Peace Prize in

her portfolio, Ebadi is now a formidable force for the conservatives to

confront. They can no longer prosecute her with impunity. Her voice can give

a boost to human rights campaigners -- as it already did when she called for

the release of political prisoners upon stepping off the plane at Tehran

airport -- and to the reform movement that has fallen into such a critical

condition. The prosecution of outspoken reformists and the closure of their

publications have not only failed to contain the public desire for

fundamental reform, but have highlighted its urgency and necessity. Khatami,

not wanting to rock the boat by challenging the Supreme Leader, has lost

more and more of his supporters and associates. The emerging split between

impatient reformists and Khatami, with his gradualist strategy of

parliamentary maneuver, was underlined when the president described Ebadi's

Nobel award as "not very important."

Instead, religious and secular reformists, for whom democracy and human

rights are the priority, are coming together to separate the institutions of

religion from those of the state. Religious thinkers, such as Abdolkarim

Soroush, Mohammad Mojtahed-Shabestari, Mohsen Kadivar and Hasan Yousefi

Eshkevari, are laying the theoretical foundations, in Islamic terms, for

such a separation. Eshkevari has been in jail since August 2000 for taking

part in the Berlin Conference that April on the future of reforms in Iran,

where he openly rejected clerical rule and the idea that imposition of the

veil on women in Iran is "Islamic." "An Islamic state," Eshekvari says,

"cannot but be democratic and the present regime in Iran is no longer

Islamic." He was charged with apostasy for "denying the essentials of

religion" -- an offense that can bring the death penalty. The Special Clergy

Court -- which now acts as an inquisition -- tried Eshkevari in camera and

eventually sentenced him to seven years in jail.

STORIES YET TO BE TOLD

It is true that Khatami and his remaining allies have suffered many

political setbacks, after failing to achieve a shift from the theocratic to

the democratic in the basis of the Islamic Republic. As a result, they have

lost the trust and support of the general public. But they have succeeded in

one important respect: they have demystified the power games that were for

so long conducted in a religious language, and they have exposed the way

Islam and the shari'a have been used instrumentally to justify autocratic

rule. This success is central to what the reformist movement in Iran is

about -- changing the terms of reference of Islamic discourses. The

reformists in the Majles have gone a long way toward this goal, by

separating Islam from despotism and Islamic law from patriarchy, and by

creating an Islamic discourse that is democratic and respects the human

rights of the people.

When Shirin Ebadi was forced to step down in 1979, the Iranian judiciary

lost an honest and competent judge because of a central assumption in

orthodox interpretations of Islamic law that women are "defective in

intellect." Though in modern times this assumption is no longer openly

defended -- and, since 1992, women once again serve as judges in Iran --

such prejudice against women still informs many other laws administered in

the name of Islam and is alive in the minds of many clerics. The Friday

prayer leader in Urmiyeh, Hojjat ol-Islam Hassani, who always speaks his

mind, had the courage to utter it when he joined the clerical chorus

condemning Ebadi's award. "The Global Arrogance," he told his congregation

in his Friday sermon on October 17, "calls this 'defective-in-intellect'

lady, with her criminal convictions and her secular thoughts, a 'jurist' and

gives her the Nobel Prize."

As is its wont, the reformist press merely printed Hassani's pontificating

without comment. Another piece of news, reported on October 1 on reformist

websites, again without comment, reads: "Hamideh Hassani, daughter of

Urmiyeh's Friday prayer leader, died in the hospital. She committed suicide

by setting herself on fire in the family's private orchard. She was married

with children. Hassani appeared on the local TV station, and said that, as

suicide is forbidden (haram) in Islam, he would not take part in any funeral

ceremonies held for his daughter." The two news items are not apparently

connected. But there is a thread that links them: the intolerance and lack

of compassion, even for one's own daughter, of some ruling clerics, and the

despair of young women trapped and silenced by patriarchal tradition. The

work of Shirin Ebadi, and the protection granted her by the spotlight

trained upon winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, will make it easier for the

world to hear the voices and learn about the pain of those Iranian women,

like Hamideh Hassani, whose stories have yet to be told.

This article was originally posted on the Middle East Online Report and is used here with permission. Middle East Report Online is a free service of the Middle East Research

and Information Project (MERIP).