Persian Pride

13 October 2003


Iranian Woman Jurist Wins Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Committee announced its winners last week, and the Peace Prize went to Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian woman who happens to be a lawyer and former judge. The feminist crowd applauded, a great many human rights activists were pleased, and it fell to Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, to complain that the Pope should have won. Ms. Ebadi is not a bad choice but hardly a great one.

She was president of the city court of Tehran in 1975 and was forced out of that job by the Khomeni coup in 1979. Since then, she has been a thorn in the side of the mullahs who have disappointed their people by mistaking fascism for Islam. Indeed, she has been honored by a jail term from the Fascislamists. The Nobel Committee are not fools; their choice was deliberate. It has forced the hard-liners in Iran to decide whether they are pleased that an Iranian won, or angry that this Iranian won. There is already a clear split in the Iranian media.

This is where the choice of Ms. Ebadi becomes questionable. The premise that human rights, especially women's rights, and democracy are somehow the foundations of peace has never been proved in any definitive way. Indeed, the United States just fought a brief war against the Saddamite regime in Iraq, in part, to improve human rights in that country (Mr. Bush certainly did not deserve the prize this year). Being a pain in a nasty regime's backside is noble and ought to occur more frequently, but it is not clearly conducive to peace.

Moreover, while her commitment to civil liberties since 1979 cannot be questioned, there is a certain discomfort that one feels because of her 4-year stint lawyering in support of the Shah of Iran -- a regime that included an ugly secret police force called the SAVAK. Perhaps, she was working within the system to prevent abuses; the possibility cannot be denied. At the same time, each individual must eventually decide that certain systems cannot be reformed from within, and the Shah's was hardly a beacon of freedom.

Despite this, Ms Ebadi's selection certainly represents an improvement over the likes of Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin. Thus far, research does not show her ever to have been in charge of waging a war.

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