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Oct. 11th, 2003 10:37 amWhile I'm enough of a cynic to doubt the practical effects of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think the decision of awarding it to Shirin Ebadi was the right one on many levels. It's a message to muslim women, especially the large number of young Irani women, as well as to the conservative muslim clerics and all those in the western world who insist on believing that Islam per se is a threat to human rights.
(On a more personal level, as the daughter of a mother who was one not the first, but one of the first female judges here in Austria and raised two children as well, I have an incredible respect for Mrs. Ebadi's work. )
This said, i think it's unbelievably petty of Lech Walesa as a former winner of the prize to publicly voice his disappointment about the pope not being awarded. Whatever JP II's merits in this respect, given the conflicts his decisions continue to spark within the catholic church, the decision would have been be a dubious one at best, though given his current state of health even critics would probably have refrained from outright protest. Moreover I think Nobel Peace Prize worthy behaviour would ideally be more or less included in the job description of the head of the catholic church, and that so many of his predecessors have fallen rather short of this ideal wouldn't have made it any less embarrassing for him to receive a prize for more or less doing his duty.
Sadly, this might also be an occasion to recall that it's women again, who are suffering most from the current state of lawlessness in Iraq. I've been reading similar reports ever since the end of the war (or what was officially passed as such) and apparently nothing much has changed since. This of course is horrible for every single woman suffering such abuse, but it might also prove a major set-back for women's rights in Iraq generally. If the threat of abduction and rape is so commonplace, families will be (probably already are) keeping their daughters out of school, lock them up at home and islamic extremists will feel themselves proven right. People might do well to remember that the Taliban won so much acceptance especially in rural areas because the put an end to a similar state of things in Afghanistan.
