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Muslim Nobel Prize sends a powerful
message
By Ehsan Ahrari
The
awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Iran's Shirin Ebadi
on October 10 will be remembered as an important
occasion for the beginning of a new era of moderation
and democracy in the world of Islam. She is a noted
human rights campaigner and a profound supporter of the
rights women and children. Her selection is a momentous
decision of the 5-member Nobel committee for a number of
reasons.
First, considering the fact that Pope
John Paul II was part of the list of potential
candidates, the Nobel committee's judgment to award a
Muslim woman was thoughtful and immeasurably timely. It
is also a celebration of the fact that Islam emphasizes
human rights and human dignity just as much as other
religions of the world. At a time when so much violence
is perpetrated in the name of Islam, such a celebration
is most warranted. As such, it will be celebrated in all
Muslim countries.
Second, in countries like Iran
and Afghanistan, where women are still being segregated,
forced to wear chador or burqa, deprived of formal
modern education, denied jobs, or even brutalized, the
selection of a Muslim woman to become a symbol of global
recognition and achievement is bound to shock the
scandalously paternalistic Muslim societies out of their
chauvinistic frame of reference. In the history of
civilizations, events of this nature carry their own
constructive, indeed sweeping, momentums. Ebadi's
comments after hearing the news of her Nobel Prize were
most fitting. She said, "I'm a Muslim, so you can be a
Muslim and support democracy. It's very good for human
rights in Iran, especially for children's rights in
Iran. I hope I can be useful."
Third, the
catapulting of Shirin Ebadi to world fame would shock
Iran's religious hardliners, who are consistently
sabotaging the will of the people - especially since the
1997 landmark election of President Mohammad Khatami -
by rescinding a number of pieces of legislation passed
by the Iranian Majlis (parliament) for their purported
"anti-Islamic" nature. The Nobel committee wanted to
make sure that the Iranian mullahs got the message about
the worldwide outrage over the violation of human rights
in Iran. It stated, "This is a message to the Iranian
people, to the Muslim world, to the whole world, that
human value, the fight for freedom, the fight for rights
of women and children should be at the center." Ole
Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the five-member selection
committee, added, "I hope the award of the peace prize
to Ebadi can help strengthen and lend support to the
cause of human rights in Iran."
Fourth, since
the global terrorism that has been perpetrated in the
name of Islam, especially since the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks on the US, there has been an open
season for those who either never made any serious
attempts to study the true nature of Islam, or have
always nurtured Islam-phobic sentiments, to consistently
berate that great religion in the name of "informed"
analysis and patriotism. And in a globally charged
environment, no time has been spent to conduct critical
analysis of such purported objective analyses. More to
the point, because of TV's need for instant and
incessant analyses of major events in the Middle East to
fill the airtime, a lot of poison has been directed at
Islam in the United States and other Western countries.
So, the nomination of Ebadi as a champion of human
rights, democracy, and rights of women and children
could not have come at a better time for the world to
pause and take a long, hard look at what Islam really
stands for.
Fifth, for Muslim countries at
large, the visibility of Shirin Ebadi may become another
reason to revisit their social and legal framework with
a view to improving the general lot of women. For South
Asia, the tradition that immediately comes to mind is
the much-cursed dowry system. For the Arab culture,
there is a dire need to completely eradicate the
shameful cultural practice of female genital mutilation.
Equally important, there has to be a renewed emphasis on
massive female education. A similar emphasis should be
made to create an environment of equal opportunity for
women. No society can make progress on the ladder of
human development by keeping half of its population
either semi- or completely illiterate, and disallowing
them a productive role in its economic development. If
Muslim countries were to have even a reasonable chance
of coming up in the globalized world, they must make
every endeavor to facilitate the fullest participation
of their citizenry.
Finally, the global
visibility of Shirin Ebadi might become one more reason
to emphasize the overall necessity for democratization
of Muslim polities. A good starting point would be to
humanize the face of all authoritarian regimes. The
Nobel committee's decision to honor a champion of human
rights and democracy might turn out to be a considerably
more potent way of democratizing the Middle East than
the haughty actions of the Bush administration to
transform it by carrying out military invasion.
In a general sense, the blame for the absence of
democracy in Muslim countries should be borne not by
Islam, but by the authoritarian regimes and their
sycophant Sunni religious scholars, and even the former
colonial occupiers. The Shia religious establishment has
proven itself to be much more sophisticated than its
Sunni counterpart in this regard. The doctrine of
quietism (ie, quiet protest regarding unjust political
rule) of the Shia played an important role in this
regard. Even though the late Ayatollah Khomeini rejected
that doctrine by advocating the overthrow of a tyrant
and establishment of a Vilayat-e-Faqih (rule of
the clergy), there still exists powerful support within
the Shia religious establishments of Iran and Iraq for
quietism, which has also remained a basis for the
separation of religion and politics - an important
precondition for the evolution of democracy. The Sunni
religious establishment, on the contrary, has a record
of being easily coopted by the powers-that-be of each
era, thereby legitimizing that power.
Several
hundred years of dynastic rule in the Middle East ended
when the European colonialists colluded to divide and
rule the region. While departing, they paid no attention
to sowing the seeds of democracy in any of those
countries. Moreover, because of the fact that toward the
end of Western colonial rule the Middle Eastern states
had a very low level of general literacy and even their
elites were not politically educated about or oriented
toward democracy, an unfortunate outcome was the
creation of authoritarian rule. Besides, even when they
departed, every single Western colonial ruler was
determined to keep its former colonies under its sphere
of influence. What better way to maintain suzerainty
than creating hapless monarchies, emirates, sheikhdoms,
or dictatorships? In this sense, the Western former
colonial masters are also responsible for the absence of
democracy in the Muslim Middle East.
Fast
forwarding to the present era, the emergence of Shirin
Ebadi as a Nobel laureate might turn out to be just one
more development in the direction of the much-desired
renaissance, if not a social revolution, that in the
foreseeable future would sweep the extant autocracies in
the world of Islam into the dustbin of history. Her
native Iran may still turn out to be a country ripe for
another revolutionary change. Hopefully, this time the
triumphant system will be true Islamic democracy.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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