Shirin Ebadi - Iran Awakening (4/52)

To be perfectly honest, I knew nothing about Shirin Ebadi and next-to-nothing about Iran when I picked up this book. Perhaps that was my attraction to it - to expand my knowledge on topics I knew little about. That, and I figured I couldn't go wrong with a memoir written by a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

While reading this book, I shocked myself with how little I knew about Iran's history. In elementary school, we learned about Canadian history, dabbled a little bit in Mesopotamia (I built a ziggurat for a class assignment!), and spent a unit on Nigeria, of all the countries in the world. In high school, we covered Canadian, American, and European history... because apparently those are the only places that matter. Most of my knowledge of the Middle East comes from what I see and hear from the news and a brief interview with my Dad, who worked in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. Pretty much you could fly jumbo jets through the holes in my knowledge of Middle East history and politics, which is probably why I was so enthralled by this book.

I'm not going to summarize her story; you should read the book instead, so I'm just going to jot down some thoughts I had while reading it.

She offers some insight into why Iran (and much of the Middle East) has such a tense relationship with the United States. It is quite shocking how much power and influence the U.S. has over other countries, and how much they have gotten away with.

One of her main messages is that Islam is indeed a progressive and peaceful religion, but it can be twisted and defiled under the power of religious extremists. It's really interesting how she remains a faithful believer in Islam despite the horrendous atrocities the shah and his followers committed in the name of Islam. As a woman and an intellectual, Ebadi suffered terribly - she was stripped of her judgeship, she was forced to wear the hejab under penalty of arrest, she watched helplessly as women's rights were obliterated through the institution of the Islamic penal code (which stated laws such as the value of a woman's life was half that of a man's and a woman needed her husband's permission to divorce), and she was imprisoned several times for her beliefs.

Ebadi is fiercely nationalistic and she recounts how she refused to speak with her friends and colleagues who left Iran during the post-revolution oppressive rule of the shah. As I read the book, I was torn several times between thinking that she was incredibly strong for staying in Iran to fight against the injustices and that she was stubbornly stupid for staying in a country where she was treated like a second-class citizen and thus would never be able to reach her full potential. I know that if I were in that situation, I never would have been able to endure what she endured. I pondered why she didn't leave Iran, couldn't she have done more effective human rights lobbying on the outside? That's debatable, I suppose, but truly, she was able to make huge differences within the context of an extremist Islamic regime.

Whether or not you agree with her religion or her politics, it's undeniable that Shirin Ebadi has had an incredible influence on the people of Iran and on human rights internationally. I really enjoyed reading her memoir, and learning about the life of an Iranian woman growing up in post-revolutionary Iran through her eyes. Definitely worth a read, and has inspired me to learn more about Iran, the Middle East, and Islam.