The echoes from Ebadi’s round of applause have now long subsided, and her book Iran Awakening is gathering dust in the remainder bins. Although she scrupulously follows her nation’s constitution in her protests, that document is increasingly disregarded by the Iranian judiciary. Now there’s an effort to discredit her outright that could turn nasty.
She elected earlier this month to defend seven indicted Baha’i leaders. The Baha’is are essentially an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, whose headquarters happens, for historical reasons, to be in Israel. Since they accept the spiritual leader Baha’ullah as a prophet, they violate the Islamic idea that Mohammed was the last Prophet who will come, so they have long been pariahs in Iran. Baha’ullah’s house was one of the first things destroyed in Iran after the 1979 Khomeini revolution.
Keyhan, the conservative house-organ in Iran, has now said Ebadi’s daughter has embraced Bahai’ism, since she is studying at Montreal’s McGill University under a Baha’i professor. The article also alleged Ebadi herself may have converted. While the allegations are absurd, state-control of media can ensure her denials receive minimal coverage.
It’s unlikely she would be arrested and tortured, as has happened to many other opponents of the regime. Even in a week when the U.S. has been shown as incapable of militarily supporting its excitable client, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, it’s unlikely that would happen; though arrest itself is a possibility, since she’s been in jail before.
The twist in the tail is that as an apostate, she could legitimately be killed by a zealot, or somebody who could plausibly be presented as a lone religious purist. Even if this doesn’t result, she is under increasing psychological pressure, and of course anyone associated with her is threatened as well. Another lawyer from her law firm was jailed last year for defending someone unpopular with the powers that be.
The outcome is hard to predict. But with the world distracted by the U.S. election, the Olympics, and Georgia, the issue of the possible fate of one brave, isolated woman is all too likely to slide out of sight.