IRAN AWAKENING

This book is a suberbly personal and true account of the life of a Nobel prizewinner, Shiin Ebadi. This reluctant heroine, whose actions are driven from her compassion for the women and children in Iran living around her, finds herself battling Iran's fundamentalist religious and sexist repressors. The focus on the author's own suffering, but on the enormity of the work that lies before her. She is a strategist, diplomat, advocate, loving mother and partner. Her persepctive on the wider stages of change in Iran, the awakening of democracy, gives valuable insights. This book is written in a style of dense brewity. Pages are packed with facts and information, not a word is wasted. A highly readable novel.

Ebadi provides a well written account of changes in Iranian society since the time of the last Shah of Persia. This book is a must for anyone interest in this part of the world. It is surprising that her own life experiences have not,apparently, influenced her personal reaction to her birth nation. Absolutely fascinating

Wonderful insights from a woman who clearly loves her country ...easy to read and understand ...well worth the effort

I found the book fascinating and all the more so as it is in our time and it is important to be aware of what's happening in the world.

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian political activist, lawyer, judge and human rights activist, as well as the and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.She wrote in the Prologue of this 2003 book, “In the fall of 2000, nearly a decade after I began my legal practice defending victims of violence in the courts of Iran, I face the ten most harrowing days of my entire career… The government had recently admitted partial complicity in the premeditated spate of killings in the late nineties that took the lives of dozens of intellectuals… I represented the family of two of the victims… The residing judge had granted the victims’ lawyers only ten days to read the entire dossier… I had reached a page more detailed, and more narrative… It was the transcript of a conversation between a government minister and a member of the death squad. When my eyes first fell on the sentence … I thought I had misread… ‘The next person to be killed is Shirin Ebadi.’ Me… I remember mostly an overwhelming feeling of disbelief. Why do they hate me so much?... How have I created such enemies, so eager to spill my blood that they cannot wait for Ramadan to end?... unlike the victims whose families we were defending, I had evaded death.”She recalls in 1971, “when the shah displayed his vast ego and limited judgment before a rapt nation… He had organized a spectacular celebration to commemorate twenty-five hundred years of Persian empire… most noticed that the shah had spent $300 million on makeshift silk tents with marble bathrooms, and on food and wine for twenty-five thousand people flown in from Paris… Ayatollah Khomeini issued a terse condemnation … invoking the millions of poor Iranians who he said … were without baths… I had a rare premonition. The shah’s Iran… could not last… it was … to magnificently ephemeral to endure… I did not closely follow the clerical criticism of the shah… I did not consciously credit the shah with running an Iran in which I could be a judge. I did not imagine Ayatollah Khomeini heralding an Iran in which I could not.” (Pg. 23-24)After the 1978 revolution, she notes, “The head-scarf ‘invitation’ was the first warning that this revolution might eat its sisters… Bani-Sadr’s eyes fell on me. I expected he might … express how much it meant to him that a committed female judge such as myself had stood with the revolution. Instead, he said, ‘Don’t you think that out of respect for our beloved Imam Khomeini…it would be better if you covered your hair?’ I was shaken. Here we were, in the Ministry of Justice, after a great popular revolt that had replaced an antique monarchy with a modern republic, and the new overseer of justice was talking about hair. Hair! ‘I’ve never worn a head scarf in my life,’ I said, ‘and it would be hypocritical to start now… I don’t want to pretend to be something that I’m not’…And then I left the room.” (Pg. 39-40)She points out, “The Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s… tarnished the Reagan administration, but it also made Iranians permanently question their government’s fiery anti-American stance, especially when details of a secret mission to Iran emerged: In 1986, President Reagan dispatched national security Robert McFarlane to Tehran bearing a now-notorious chocolate cake in the shape of a key… The key-shaped cake went down as political legend in Iran, a frosted symbol of the private cooperation behind the two nations’ public antagonism.” (Pg. 47)She recounts, “In 1984, Saddam Hussein unleashed chemical weapons on the Iranian army for the first time… By and large, the world watched mutely… no coalition of the willing emerged to condemn the Iraqi dictator, let alone try to stop him. The United States… even strengthened Iraq’s hand… It was at about this time that the flight of Iranians out of the country began in earnest. After the revolution, a wave of Iranians had fled the country; those who’d opposed the revolution and those who’d feared for their lives because of their ties to the regime… Those who left mostly scattered themselves across Europe and North America… To this day, Iran sustains one of the most serious brain drains in the world… [we] have watched our young people fan out across the world, animating the societies and economies of nations other than our own.” (Pg.76-78)She began taking ‘pro bono’ cases. “I had to choose cases, I realized, that illustrated the tragic repercussions of the theocracy’s legal discrimination against women. I could recite a litany of objectionable laws---a woman’s life is worth half as much as a man’s, child custody after infancy goes automatically to the father---until I was out of breath.” (Pg. 111)She notes, “I have long wanted to write a memoir of these years, told from the perspective of a woman who was sidelined by the Islamic Revolution but stayed in Iran and carved out a professional and political role in the forbidding theocracy that emerged. Along with my own journey, I wanted to illustrate how Iran was changing, for change comes to the Islamic republic in slow and subtle ways that are easy to miss. Standing at a crowded intersection of the capital or listening to the sermon at Friday prayers, you would not immediately know that 65 percent of Iran’s university students and 43 percent of its salaried workers are women. I wanted to write a book that would help correct Western stereotypes of Islam, especially the image of Muslim women as docile, forlorn creatures. The censorship that prevails in the Islamic Republic has made it impossible to publish an honest account of my life her. My work places me in opposition to our system, and I suspect I may never be able to write anything in Iran without taking off the helmet.” (Pg. 209-210)This book will be “must reading” for anyone who looks forward to a better future for Iran.

This was interesting and much better informed and written than Jewels of Allah. The author is very honest about errors of judgement or mistakes she has made- and tells her story very clearly. There is a lot of information about the lead up to the revolution that was very insightful for a westerner who struggles to understand why the Ayatollahs are so popular. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in Iran and women's rights.

I brought this as I was curious about Iran after watching that Ben Afleck film at the cinema (the one with the hostages..... the name escapes me). This book gives a great insight into the politics of Iran from the time of the Shah up to the current time. You can understand the anti america feeling that Iranians have but you can also see the human rights violations that came about after the revolution. I'm not particularly political but it's worth learning something about Iran considering they are often in the news and George W branded them as part of the axis of evil.

Goods as ordered with timely delivery. A really interesting book giving an insight into the challenges faced by Iranian society living under a strict religious regime, and showing how the doctrine of ‘unforeseen consequences ‘ has resulted in a glimmer of light for the female population, offering hope for the long term future

An intelligent and touching account of the trials and suffering of Iranian people- particularly women due to a tyrannical regime and the indomitable courage of Shirin Abadi in defending human rights at the risk of imperiling her life. The human spirit cannot be quelled forever and we hope for an end to the oppression in Iran. Since this book was written there appears to be a relaxing of tyrannical rule with the appointment of a moderate leader. Hope .....

What a brilliant read totally absorbing , and what a brave lady she is . I loved the political knowledge and the way she took u into Iranian culture ( I have a lot of Iranian friends that I met just before the revolution ) could have read and read had this book carried on superb writing