No Contradictions between Islam and human rights?

The Nobel Peace Prize has thus been awarded to Ebadi who represents 'Reformed Islam' as if such a thing is possible. Even when De Klerk won the 1993 Prize with Nelson Mandela, it wasn't for 'reformed' Apartheid but for the termination of the Apartheid regime because Apartheid's supporters (including many of the western governments that support sexual apartheid in Iran today) were made to understand by the likes of the ANC and international public opinion that Apartheid couldn't be reformed, wouldn't be accepted or tolerated and had to be terminated. The same is true of Islamic laws and states, political Islam and sexual Apartheid.

I suppose it could have been a lot worse. Khatami or the Pope could have received the Prize. Ebadi has after all done a lot of good work and begun to use her influence to call for the release of political prisoners and an end to amputations and stonings. She has the responsibility, however, to do much more - not as a representative of 'Reformed Islam' but of the women and people of Iran.

A word to Shirin Ebadi: Khatami hopes that you 'who come from a religious family and [have] expressed [your] love for Islam, will pay attention to the interests of the Islamic world and of Iran?' I, on the other hand, 'hope' that you will pay attention to the interests of human beings and their full human rights. Of course, this would mean leaving the ranks of Islamic 'feminism' and 'Reformism'. And of course this would mean joining the equality seeking and liberation movement in Iran, which won't accept or tolerate sexual Apartheid and is demanding the termination of not just Islamic punishments but all Islamic laws and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This article was first published in WPI Briefing 119 dated October 20, 2003. For more details on misogyny in Islam, see article entitled: Islam, Political Islam and Women in the Middle East, March 18, 2002 on www.hambastegi.org/english/index.htm.