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E-Post on Shirin EbadiFriday, 9 September 2011
Michael Craig Hillmann
A friend has just sent me a YouTube link for a 19-minute
television talk by Bahram Moshiri (an
Iranian-American political activist who hosts a Persian-language
television show on an Iranian-
American channel in Los Angeles) noting that the subject of the
latter's talk is "criticism of Ms.Shirin Ebadi."
In the talk, Mr. Moshiri describes the now expatriate Iranian
attorney Shirin Ebadi as a person
who had an opportunity or chance owing to her receipt of the
Nobel Peace Prize to accomplish
things, but lacked the "capacity to take advantage of that
opportunity" and asks: "Is Ms. Ebadi's
mind working?" He further asserts that hers is a "mistaken
interpretation of Islam" and that she
engaged in "cheating" in a recent public appearance. In
addition, he characterizes Ms. Ebadi's
Nobel acceptance speech as "emphasizing Muslims."
As arguably the best known Iranian outside of Iran these days,
Shirin Ebadi has taken advantage
of her fame as a Nobel recipient to speak all over the world
about Iran, Islam, women's rights,
democracy, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. At a recent
conference on Peace in Newark (NJ),
she condemned the Islamic Republic of Iran for passing specific
laws which she enumerates that
discriminate against women. At another recent conference in
Washington, D.C., she reminded
her audience that what the Islamic Republic of Islam prescribes
and advocates is not Islam, but
rather the IRI's fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, her
interpretation as an educated Muslim
essentially different.
Readers can guess those differences from a careful reading of
Ms. Ebadi's Nobel speech, the text
and translation of which one can easily find online. It so
happens that a transcript of her signed
Persian text and an approved English translation appear in a
textbook called Persian Listening
(Dunwoody Press, 2008) as an illustration of speechifying in
Persian. It also so happens, contrary
to Mr. Moshiri's assertion, that the speech does not base itself
on or emphasize Islam. Indeed, the
first half of the speech does not deal at all with Islam and
when Ms. Ebadi identified herself in
the second half of the speech as a Muslim woman opposed to
patriarchy and male domination,
her audience understood that she was rejecting any sort of
Muslim or Christian or monarchical or
socialist or other sort of government that deserves the label
patriarchal or male chauvinist or
totalitarian. And her unequivocal opposition to the Islamic
Republic of Iran shows that she
practices with her political activism what she preaches.
When Ms. Ebadi, who is not a dynamic or particularly articulate
public speaker and who
sometimes speaks simplistically off the cuff, reminds her
audiences that different interpretations
of Islam exist, she is presumably saying that she does not
accept a fundamentalist interpretation
of Islam that does not acknowledge equal status to woman or does
not behave democratically in
other arenas. When Mr. Moshiri alleges that Shirin Ebadi's is a
"mistaken interpretation of
Islam," some non-Muslim students of Islam and most students of
logic will likely disagree.
When a non-Muslim tells a Muslim that his or her interpretation
of his or her or faith is
"mistaken," that non-Muslim is imposing an outsider's view of
something on an insider. When
some one tells me that he is a Muslim while holding a glass of
wine in his hand, I don't tell him
he can't be a Muslim, because the Koran has seven or so
different things to say about wine and,
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in my view, my Muslim interlocator can choose which of those
Koranic statements to abide by or
adapt. In fact, forty years of living among Muslims offer me
anecdotal evidence that contradicts
Mr. Moshiri's characterization of Muslims. And as an academic
student of Persian writing and
some other Iranian arts, I have an equally lengthy exposure to
Muslims from Rudaki onward,
including medieval Muslim poets such as Sa'di, Rumi, and Hafez
and medieval and later Muslim
architects and painters and Persian carpet designers and such,
and scores of contemporary Iranian
writers and artists and thinkers whose faith system is Islam,
but who opposed the Pahlavimonarchy and oppose the Islamic Republic
of Iran and oppose any role for religion in
governance.
In hisAutobiography, Benjamin Franklin had these things to say
about religion and Islam.
...the building of a house [in Philadelphia for religiously
minded people] to meet in
was no sooner propos'd, and persons appointed to receive
contributions, but sufficient
sums were soon received to procure the ground and erect the
building...Both house and
ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any
preacher of any religious
persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at
Philadelphia; the design in
building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the
inhabitants in general; sothat even if the Mufti of Constantinople
were to send a missionary to preach
Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.
I never doubted...the existence of the Deity; that he made the
world, and governed it by
his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the
doing good to man; that
our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and
virtue rewarded, either
here or hereafter. These I esteem'd the essentials of every
religion...I respected them
all...This respect to all, with an opinion that the worst had
some good effects, induced me
to avoid all discourse that might tend to lessen the good
opinion another might have
of his own religion.
Benjamin Franklins words make sense even to agnostics like me
who find the condemnation of
religion as a faith system of religiously minded persons who
practice their religion personally
and privately and whose behavior does not impinge upon the
rights of others does not seem to
make intellectual sense.
