‘Islam Opposes Murder & Terror’
Dan Eaton, Reuters
JAKARTA, 19 March 2004 — Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi yesterday accused many Muslim governments of using religion to justify tyranny and said the teachings of Islam were fundamentally opposed to murder and terror.

The outspoken lawyer, who became a hate figure among Iran’s hardliners for her support of social and legal reforms, said some Muslim leaders were afraid to trust majority opinion in their own countries.

“Today, many governments have made a shield of Islam, to hide behind it. They justify their tyranny with interpretations of the religion,” Ebadi, who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, told a conference of scholars in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

The 56-year-old human rights campaigner, who has been lambasted by Iran’s conservative newspapers for shaking hands with men and appearing in public without a headscarf, did not name specific governments.

“Islam is not a religion of violation and terror,” said Ebadi, the first woman to become a judge in Iran and the first Muslim woman to win a Nobel prize.

“Be assured, if someone were assassinated under the name of Islam, there is a misuse of Islam. Any violation done by an individual or a group should not be registered under the name of Islam.”

Ebadi, who has urged governments to address injustice and discrimination as the root causes of militancy, also issued a veiled criticism of the United States-led war in Iraq.

“The fight against terrorism is a legitimate fight of a human being, but it must be done under the framework of the United Nations,” she told reporters after he speech.

Because of her vocal support for political and economic reforms and abolition of penalties such as stoning and amputation of limbs, Iran’s conservatives call Ebadi an agent of the West.



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