Shirin ebadi, this year's winner of the Nobel peace prize, is the sort of woman―assertive, severe and frighten-ingly well-versed in Islamic and western law―that Iran's conservative establishment cannot stand. A judge under the monarchy, she did not follow colleagues to overseas refuge after the revolution, but stayed on as an advocate, fighting cases of political murder, repression and domestic violence. A defender of Islam, she wrote learnedly about women's and children's rights under Islamic law. She lost most of her high-profile cases, but survived. Overnight, she has become a celebrity. Ms Ebadi, who has always argued that Iran must solve its own problems, returned home this week from a visit to Paris to find hardline newspapers charging her, yet again, with supposed links with foreign powers. One paper surmised that devious America had influenced the Nobel committee's decision. Her celebrity will probably protect her from a repeat of the short prison term she served in 2000, but not from the restrictions and dangers that dog all Iranian women who struggle for their rights.
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