An Iranian human rights lawyer who fell foul of her country’s conservative clerics has won the Nobel peace prize, in what some see as a rebuff to the Pope, who was heavily tipped to win the prize.
A lawyer and activist who has been imprisoned by the theocratic authorities and threatened by hardline ideologues, Shirin Ebadi is the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to win the prize.
“As a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, far beyond its borders,” the awards committee said in the citation yesterday.
In Rome, the decision was seen as a humiliating rebuff for Pope John Paul 11. His fellow Pole, Lech Walesa, said: “It’s incredible. It’s unbelievable.”
Next week sees the 25th anniversary of John Paul’s election and his health is such that many, inside and outside the Vatican, believed it was the Nobel committee’s last chance to honour the pontiff, who spoke out against the war in Iraq.
There was no official reaction from the Holy See, but the rector of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Father Justo Lacunza Balda, welcomed it as “a truly important gesture in support of human rights in the Muslim world”.
Ms Ebadi, 56, represented prominent dissidents and took on cases to highlight discriminatory laws against women, arguing that legal equality is compatible with the Islamic faith.
“My problem is not with Islam, it’s with the culture of patriarchy,” Ms Ebadi told the Guardian earlier this year. “Practices such as stoning have no foundation in the Koran.”
Ms Ebadi served as Iran’s first female judge during the Shah’s era. But after the 1979 revolution ushered in a conservative theocracy, Islamic clerics ruled that women could not sit as judges. That interpretation of Sharia law is now coming under question and some clerics have called for allowing women judges.
Ms Ebadi told a press conference in Paris that her prize “belongs to all people who work for human rights in Iran”, and added that it should be welcomed even by Islamic hardliners.
She hoped the award would send a strong signal to Iran, currently suspected of developing a nuclear weapons programme. “As a person who has actively been involved in human rights, I am against war and conflict. Countries and nations do not need war.
“This prize shows above all that Islam and human rights are absolutely not incompatible. If human rights are not respected in some Muslim countries, it is because certain people there are making a completely false interpretation of the laws of Islam.”
She added: “The most urgent problem in Iran is freedom of speech and the fact that people are are being imprisoned for voicing their opinions and their views. The most urgent thing today is for them to be released immediately.”
The award came as an embarrassment to the conservative clerical establishment that wields ultimate authority in Iran. State television hesitated for a few hours before acknowledging the award.
Conservatives called it a politically motivated decision designed to undermine the country’s leadership.
Hardline voices have castigated advocates for women’s rights as tools of western governments allegedly trying to undermine traditional Islamic values. They have opposed proposals to allow women equal rights in marriage or to change “blood money” provisions that render the value of a woman’s life half that of a man’s in financial terms.
Iran’s president, Mohammad Khatami, and his reformist allies in parliament may see the Nobel prize as a means of renewing demands for democratic and social reform. The conservative judiciary and unelected government bodies have repeatedly vetoed the reformist coalition’s initiatives and imprisoned some of their outspoken supporters.
Vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a close associate of Khatami, called the Nobel decision “very good for every Iranian”.
Ebadi received a suspended sentence in 2000 after she and fellow lawyers videotaped an interview with a former paramilitary who provided detailed accounts of repression by the authorities against student demonstrators and opponents.
She defended the family of a couple who were among the victims of serial murders of intellectuals and writers in the late 90s. When the reformist government purged the intelligence ministry of hardliners, a document emerged that was an apparent hit list of political enemies. Ebadi’s name was on the list.