The Prize and the Apology

It almost brought tears to my eyes. Last week the Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, a Muslim woman, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work championing the promotion of peaceful, democratic solutions to serious problems in society and fighting for the rights of refugees, women, and children in Iran. Furthermore, she has been involved in a number of controversial political cases, one of the most important being her revealing the culprits behind the 1999 attack on students at Tehran University.

Her tireless efforts in Iran earned her many stays in prison, and finally, they have also earned her the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ebadi's prize should accomplish many things. First of all, it should further debunk the myth that Muslim women are the subdued and abused subordinates of men in Iran, or any other Muslim country. People may say that Ebadi is one exception to the rule, but that is not true. There are many Muslim women who have fought the same fight. Although she was the one recognized, I believe Shirin Ebadi won her award on behalf of all Muslim women struggling for equal rights in modern Muslim societies.

As Hisham Kassem--head of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights--said, "This is a recognition for what [Muslim women activists] do, a sort of apology for ignoring them for so long." Among these countless women--women who do not garner the loving attention of the media--are Egypt's first female judge, Tahany el-Gebaly; Saudi writer Fowziyah Abu Khalid; Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini; and Hauwa Ibrahim, defense attorney for Amina Lawal, recently freed from death by stoning in Nigeria.

Ebadi's Nobel Prize should also help prove, as Ebadi said herself, that Islam and human rights are not incompatible: "There is no contradiction between an Islamic republic, Islam, and human rights. If in many Islamic countries human rights are flouted, this is because of a wrong interpretation of Islam. All I've tried to do in the last 20 years was to prove that, with another interpretation of Islam, it would be possible to introduce democracy to Muslim countries."

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