One Woman's Way

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Thus far, Ebadi has ignored the threats. Though she sometimes calls herself a revolutionary, she is better described as a born lawyer. Her late father, a functionary in the deposed Shah's government, was a lawyer who authored a landmark text on commercial law. She followed in his footsteps and earned a law degree at Tehran University, becoming one of the first female judges in Iran. Hearing the tragic cases of abused children in the Tehran family court sparked her interest in the rights and welfare of young people.

Although she supported the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ebadi quickly became one of its victims when the new Islamic regime barred women from holding judgeships. Instead of silencing her, though, this merely put her on the path to becoming Iran's foremost promoter of the rights of the individual. She wrote 11 books on the subject, trying to alert Iranians to rights they didn't know they had. The book that made her reputation in Iran, The Rights of the Child (1988), was the first in the country to argue that children had such things. Other works covered the rights of women, child laborers, medical patients, artists and even architects. In the late 1980s, she established an NGO for neglected children without even waiting for government permission.

	I am the same Ebadi, your servant and your teacher — SHIRIN EBADI

Ebadi also became a prolific commentator in the Iranian press, sometimes triggering national debates. Her most important case involved a divorced mother seeking justice in the slaying of her 9-year-old daughter, Aryan Golshani, by the girl's father. Despite her pleas that he was a convicted drug abuser who prevented their daughter from attending school, her ex-husband had been awarded custody of Aryan in line with Iran's Shari'a-based laws that favor fathers. The ex-husband then walked free after the child's death, on the grounds that a father has total rights over the lives of his children.

By championing the case, Ebadi managed to get the father a one-year prison sentence and won a small, yet significant, change in the law — parliament stipulated that drug abuse and disregarding a child's education were sufficient grounds to deny fathers custody. "If this law had existed before Aryan's death, she would have lived with her mother and would be alive today," Ebadi says firmly.

Ebadi believes that even Iran's repressive Islamic system is reformable. The first step, as she sees it, is for the religious authorities to hand down proper interpretations of Koranic law. Many of the laws that impose restrictions on women, she maintains, have no basis in Islam. "This is all because of a patriarchal culture that interprets Islam," she says. "But they are a misinterpretation. I am out to fight this patriarchal culture." Even in instances where Koranic rules conflict with modern norms, Ebadi argues, Islamic leaders have the authority to adjust the religious laws.

Ebadi's views on religion are not popular among a young generation of Iranians that has grown up feeling suffocated by Islamic rules and, increasingly, demands a secular democratic state. During a recent appearance by Ebadi at Amir Khabir University in Tehran, many in the audience grumbled that she was too supportive of Khatami, whom many Iranian reformers accuse of not standing up to hard-line clerics. "Why is she talking so much about democracy and Islam?" one girl muttered to a fellow student. "She is ruining everything." Iran's impatient youth seem to believe that the Nobel makes Ebadi untouchable and she should use her moral authority to denounce the mullahs. "Students expected Mrs. Ebadi to actively pursue issues related to human rights and democracy," says Mehdi Habibi, 23, a student leader at the university. "Instead, she is talking all about how democracy is compatible with Islam. None of the things she is saying are what people expected her to say."

Ebadi knows she's not untouchable, and her message is measured. She explains that the Nobel is not hers alone, since "the road was paved with the pain and suffering of those who spent years in prison for their beliefs." What is important, she says, is that Iranians work together to build a democracy, rather than pin their hopes on individual leaders, herself included. "I come here to say that I am the same Ebadi, your servant and your teacher," she adds. "But don't get caught up in the cult of heroes. Heroes die. Heroes fall. Our country doesn't need a hero."

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