I was impressed to see that the normally reflexively anti-American Nobel Peace Prize committee has this year avoided the chance to take a swipe at US policy, and instead awarded the prize to someone truly deserving: Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi. Previously, the prize has been awarded to some undeserving candidates like Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter, whose only recent contribution to peace was in defending the regime of Saddam Hussein. Other times, the prize is given to those so openly hostile to peace that the prize has become a sort of sick joke. Topping this list would be Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger-two Peace Prize recipients who have been instrumental in orchestrating mass murder throughout their long and illustrious careers. In that sense, this year’s choice does more to redeem the value of the award itself by its association with Ms. Ebadi than it does to heighten her own reputation.
Shirin Ebadi was one of the first female Judges in Iran, a position she held until the Islamic “Revolution” stripped her of that position. (Why are the most reactionary movements always billed as revolutions?) Since then, Ms. Ebadi worked to oppose the systematic oppression of women in Iran, and end the control of government by religious hardliners. Ms. Ebadi has been jailed many times for her activities. That she is even allowed to live in Iran is evidence that she has learned to work within the system-a dangerous position indeed, but perhaps the only way to bring about the peaceful reform she desires.
There is a tendency among some people to unanimously equate “peaceful” with “good,” and assume that the peaceful is always preferable to the violent. However, it is an unfortunate reality of the world that some threats can only be countered with superior force, and occasionally the desire for peace can be lethal. Though force may remain a necessity in confronting militant Islamism and the terrorism it breeds, it is ultimately in people like Shirin Ebadi that real hope for victory over religious extremism lies. A hero of human rights and the dignity of women, she has proven that while the Islamic faith is not incompatible with those ideals, we must not let shortsighted appeals to differing “cultural values” excuse us from standing up to theocratic repression wherever it should present itself. Shirin Ebadi should be the model for the kind of reformer who will do more to change the face of the Islamic world than any amount of American force ever could.
Today, the power of the theocrats in Iran is beginning to wane, thanks in no small part to Shirin Ebadi and others like her. But there are still battles to be fought. The body of Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi remains buried in Tehran, where Iranian Intelligence agents savagely beat her to death. The Iranian government has been anything but cooperative in the investigation into her death, changing its story multiple times and refusing even her family access to the body. And yet Canada remains remarkably passive regarding the apparent state murder of one of its citizens.
While we praise the work done by Ms. Ebadi, we must not neglect our own responsibilities to oppose fundamentalist thuggery and oppression-peacefully and otherwise.
