After receiving of the nobel prize in 2003 and while the spotlights of the world were on her, Shirin Ebadi spent much of that valuable time promoting the possibility of a democratic government within an Islamic system. Her idea was not necessarily rooted in her approval of the ruling regime but in her religious beliefs. At the time Ebadi like many revisionists still believed in the lip services of likes of president Khatami and the Co.
5 years later and after another failure of the revisionist movement which lead to the full take over of the office of the presidency and the parliament by the fundamentalists, Ebadi’s position has evolved and she now clearly stands for a secular democracy and suggests the separation of the religion from the state: Watch her latest interview with the Voice of America (minute 58)
However as I stated in my last week’s article, Mrs. Ebadi still needs to make the next leap of reality check that the current system and regime will never voluntarily reform and planting such expectations in the minds of the so many Iranian who look up to likes of Shirin Ebadi will only lengthen the rule of the current rulers of Iran.
Such false presumption may also be deeply rooted in Ebadi’s lack of clarity due to cloud of the religious dogmas that still surround her. One can only hope that Mrs. Ebadi will soon come to this realization also.
