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Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi says human rights compatible with Islam
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Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize, 2003
On the day President Barak Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Shirin Ebadi—the first Iranian woman to win the prize—spoke to an audience of five hundred people at Naropa University. Dr. Ebadi posed three questions:
- Is Islam compatible with human rights?
- If so, why is there discrimination in Middle Eastern Islamic countries, especially against women?
- Should Muslims promote democracy and human rights through a secular state or one based on a more accurate interpretation of Islam?
First, to make her case that Islam is compatible with human rights, Dr. Ebadi pointed to Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that have had strong female leaders. She also noted that Malaysia and Morocco have banned torture and physical punishment and that Iran and Bangladesh have proposed similar legislation. These examples lead Dr. Ebadi to conclude that Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is open to interpretation and therefore, can be compatible with democracy and human rights.
Second, Dr. Ebadi argued that the root of discrimination lies not in Islam but in the way male leaders distort it to remain in power. For example, after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, these leaders distorted the Qur’an to create laws that made a woman’s life and testimony in court worth half that of a man’s. A man could also marry up to four wives and get a divorce without preconditions while a woman would face great difficulty in seeking divorce. Dr. Ebadi herself lost her position as a judge and was demoted to a clerk.
Fighting this discrimination is not easy because anyone who protests Iranian policy is branded an enemy of Islam and subject to imprisonment and torture. We saw this in last summer’s protests against presidential election fraud. Some United States’ policies have contributed to these problems. For example, during the Cold War, we supported Islamic extremists to prevent the spread communism in places such as Afghanistan. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, we made these extremists our new enemies.
Third, this polarization between the Middle East and West has caused Muslims to rally around their Islamic identity. As a result, arguing for a secular state would not win over the Iranian people at this time. Instead, Dr. Ebadi believes in promoting progress through more correct interpretations of the Qur’an. To that end, Dr. Ebadi defends her legal clients on the basis on less discriminatory interpretations of Qur’anic court orders.
In addition, she and other Muslim women are creating institutions to interpret the Qur’an in a way that respects human and woman’s rights and the pluralist history of the former Ottoman Empire. Some of these organizations include the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE), both of which are headed by Daisy Khan, a Muslim Kashmiri who lives in the Unites States. Another progressive voice is that of Laleh Bakhtiar, the first American woman to author an English translation of the Qur’an. Bakhtiar’s father is Iranian and she lived there for twenty years while studying Islam and Qur’anic Arabic.
Dr. Ebadi and these women are asking President Obama and us to hear their voices—and the voices of the millions of Iranians who took to the streets to peacefully protest—so that we can support them in promoting democracy and human rights. Support requires us to go beyond our fears to understand that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda do not speak for the majority of Muslims. It also involves giving Muslims space to develop their own solutions.
At the end of Dr. Ebadi’s talk, a young girl asked for advice on becoming a human rights attorney. Dr. Ebadi replied, “There’s no money in it (laughing). But what comes is an inner satisfaction so when I go to bed at night I feel peaceful.” We’ll feel this same satisfaction as we understand and support Muslims committed to promoting democracy and human rights in the Middle East.
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