CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – I haven’t paid much attention to the Nobel Committee since their debacle in 2009. If you recall, they nominated Barack Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize. He’d been in office for 11 days. His only achievement at the time was getting elected.
I said at the time that the committee disgraced itself by making a preemptive choice. Obama was honored for the good he might do during his time in office. The award was actually intended for Obama’s political base, for, supposedly bringing American politics into a post-racial era.
This year, however, the Nobel Committee deserves laurels for an enlightened choice. Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women’s right crusader, is being honored. She is currently serving a 12 year prison term for anti-government activity, and will receive 150 lashes when her sentence is up.
If there is ever a country that deserves international shame for its women’s rights record, it is Iran. It is a country where religious police roam the streets, looking for women who they deem are dressed immodestly. Perhaps you’ve forgotten about the case of Masha Amini. She was a 22-year-old woman who was in a car with her brother when the religious police pulled alongside their car and dragged her off. Her crime: her hijab, the muslim head covering for women, wasn’t long enough. It left her arms and elbows uncovered. Masha was taken to a nearby police van and beaten. She died three days later from what authorities said was a heart attack. No one believes that. She died from police brutality.
Nobel Prize winner Mohammadi organized some of the protests that followed, where Iranian women wore western clothing and make-up in defiance of religious persecution.
You might ask, where are the feminists in the United States?
Today I ask a slightly different question. This isn’t a feminist issue; it’s a human rights issue. Are there some counties whose behavior is so outrageous that they deserve to be international pariahs? In Saudi Arabia a religious leader suggested that women can’t drive cars because operating the floor pedals could damage their reproductive organs. Religious fanatics in Afghanistan and Pakistan throw acid on women who dare to go to school. Iran has has another hijab-beating case. The more-recent victim is in a coma.
Do we need Iran’s oil so badly that we’re willing to look the other way?
Chris Conley
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