Awakening to a Different Vision of Iran

If Shirin Ebadi had handpicked the date for her memoir, Iran Awakening, to be released, she could not have chosen better. Into the boiling cauldron of tension between Iran and the US over Iranian nuclear ambitions, comes a cooling influence, a peek into the life and thoughts of everyday Iranian people and a plea for sanity and calm, for restraint and mutual understanding between Americans and Iranians.

“In the Islamic Republic,” Ebadi writes, “We have a problem with representation. Our diplomats around the world are, naturally, loyal to the regime, and the regime’s credibility is not such that it reflects the true opinions of the people. The responsibility falls, then, on unofficial ambassadors to relate Iranians’ perceptions and hopes to the world.”

Ebadi is one such unofficial ambassador, and a brilliant one at that. A devout Muslim and fiercely loyal to her country, she has become the face of human rights in Iran, focusing her legal practice on pro bono defense of women, children, and writers. For her work, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. On her return to Iran, she writes, she was greeted by crowds that rivaled those greeting Ayatollah Khomeini when he returned from exile in 1979. Crowds carrying placards that proclaimed, “This is Iran. We are united for Peace and Humanity.” It is a picture of Iran that we in the West rarely see.

Ebadi’s memoir weaves the story of her life – starting with childhood and following her path through college, judgeship, being stripped of her title after the 1979 Revolution, and finally her practice of law under Islamic theocracy – with the story of Iran’s politics. It is a story at once inspiring and chilling.

Starting with the CIA toppling of popularly elected president Mossadegh, the first section of the book traces the decadent and dangerous days of the shah and his secret police, the SAVAK, contrasting the shah’s excesses to the simple joys of the Iranian people in life itself – in family, good food, shared company, intellectual discussions, and student protests. Against this background, Ebadi describes her own awakening to politics, and her burgeoning awareness of the patriarchal nature of Iranian culture. Her descriptions of Iranian life are lyrical and evocative; her descriptions of the anti-monarchy sentiment resulting from the shah’s abuses give readers insight into the mindset behind a revolution that often seems incomprehensible to the point of verging on insanity.

The second section of the book relates the chaos of the revolution. With breath-taking sincerity and unflinching self-critique, she describes how Khomeini’s simple “Down with the Shah!” managed to unite an idealistic populace that did not think through the implications of his dedication to Islamic theocracy, nor his adherence to a particularly stringent and punitive vision of Islam. She speaks eloquently of the cost the Iran-Iraq war in terms of its death toll, the devastation it wreaked upon the Iranian economy, the cult of martyrdom that it spawned, and how it effectively stifled opposition to the increasingly totalitarian nature of Khomeini’s regime.

Pamela Taylor is co-chair of the Progressive Muslim Union, Director of the Islamic Writers Alliance, and co-editor of the finally launched MWUZine. She likes to think of herself as a pen of all trades. She works as a journalist covering the religion beat for NUVO magazine and as an opinion writer for the Religion News Service and the Indianapolis Star. She is an award winning poet and science fiction author. You can find more about Pamela on her website, www.pktaylor.com or her blog www.pktaylorcom/pksblog/warpedgalaxies.html.