Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for democracy and human rights in Iran and elsewhere, spoke Saturday at the Islamic Center of American, in Dearborn.
Following is a transcription of her translated remarks:

As a Muslim Iranian, I state here that I do criticize the government of Iran. But this does not mean that America has the right to invade Iran. And if America has not learned its lesson from Iraq and thinks of invading Iran, notwithstanding all of the criticisms we have of our government, we will defend our country to the last drop of our blood. And we will not let an alien soldier set foot on the land of Iran.

If American speaks of globalization, this doesn’t mean that the whole world is seen as one village and Bush is seen as the only sheriff of that village.

Fortunately, there are one billion two hundred million Muslims in the world. And, if it is necessary, they are all going to forget about their discrepancies and unite. And we will not permit the wrong theory of a clash of civilizations to take place.

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Mr. George Bush,

President of the United States of America

For sometime now I have been thinking; how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena — which are being constantly debated, especially in political forums and amongst university students. Many questions remain un-answered. These have prompted me to discuss some of the contradictions and questions, in the hopes that it might bring about an opportunity to redress them.

Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ, the great messenger of God, feel obliged to respect human rights, present liberalism as a civilization model, announce one’s opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and WMDs, make “War on Terror” his slogan, and finally, work towards the establishment of a unified international community — a community which Christ and the virtuous of the earth will one day govern,

but at the same time,

have countries attacked, the lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city or convoy for example, have the entire village, city or convoy set ablaze.

Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around one hundred thousand people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps fifty years. At what price? Hundreds of billions of dollars spent from the treasury of one country and certain other countries and tens of thousands of young men and women — as occupation troops — put in harms way, taken away from family and loved ones, their hands stained with the blood of others, subjected to so much psychological pressure that every day some commit suicide, and those returning home suffer depression, become sickly and grapple with all sorts of aliments, while some are killed and their bodies handed to their families.

On the pretext of the existence of WMDs, this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country.

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And open up my chest by the Book and gladden by it my heart,
and grant me free speech by it, use my body in its service,
and grant me from Your might and power that
which would make it easy for me to do so.
-Imam Zainul Abedeen (AS) (attributed in Al-Amali)

“Global warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert, leading scientists have revealed.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences - the country’s top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough water permanently melts from them to fill the entire Yellow River.

Sandstorms, blowing in from the degraded land, are already plaguing the country. So far this year, 13 of them have hit northern China, including Beijing. Three weeks ago one storm swept across an eighth of the vast country and even reached Korea and Japan. On the way, it dumped a mind-boggling 336,000 tons of dust on the capital, causing dangerous air pollution.”

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