Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. This has been Nobel Prize Week, as many of you know, and this morning they awarded this year's Peace Prize. Here's the start of that announcement.

Speaker 2: Zan, zendegi, azadi. Woman, life, freedom. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2023 to Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.

Brian Lehrer: Woman, life, freedom. The slogan adopted by the protestors in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini over a year ago. Narges Mohammadi has championed that cause from behind bars as part of her fight for women's rights and human rights generally in Iran. To talk about this year's selection by the Nobel Committee, we're joined now by Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and her most recent book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times, and by Summer Lopez who heads the Free Expression Program at PEN America. Narges Mohammadi was also the recipient of PEN America's Freedom to Write Award this year.

Listeners, if you're familiar with the work of today's Nobel Peace Prize winner and want to share your joy about the award, call us at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or if you want to share your ideas on the poll on the Nobel Prize webpage, it's a poll that asks, do you agree that equal rights for all is a prerequisite for peace, or maybe do you agree that women's equal rights are a prerequisite for freedom? Tweet @BrianLehrer or call or text us at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Summer Lopez, can you tell us about the work of Narges Mohammadi that led to her, as the Nobel Committee cited, being arrested 13 times, convicted 5 times, and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes?

Summer Lopez: Brian, thank you so much for having me, and it's really such a pleasure to be able to speak about this. We're so delighted at PEN America to hear this news this morning and to see Narges recognized for her courage and her work. Her work has been to stand up relentlessly and to speak out and to write and to be an active advocate for women's rights and human rights and freedom in Iran, despite tremendous repression, and as you said, years of sentences to be in prison. She's been in and out of prison for decades. She's been deprived of her relationships, her connection with her family, her husband, and her two children, and just faced tremendous repercussions for her work.

She has never stopped organizing and speaking out, even from within Evin Prison, she is organizing, she is writing, she's documenting the torture and mistreatment of women in that prison. She has just been relentless. It's no surprise that the Iranian government sees her as a threat because she is. She exposes their brutality, she exposes their hypocrisy and she's not afraid of them. I think they know that that is a danger. It's really gratifying to see this recognition of her and the power that she holds as a writer, as an activist, and as a voice for human rights and for women's rights in particular.

Brian Lehrer: From what I've read, the 154 lashes part of her sentence has not been carried out. I hope that's true. Her imprisonment, we should say, preceded the protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, but she's continued her activism in that cause. She even wrote an op-ed in The New York Times just last month on the anniversary of the protests in which she talked about the way she and protestors, with her in prison, continue to agitate through sit-ins and statements and the violence the protestors are experiencing while in prison. Azar Nafisi, I read that you lost your job at the University of Tehran over your refusal to wear a headscarf. I want to ask you, first of all, just to comment in general about this selection for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Azar Nafisi: Well, we are celebrating the fact that Iranian people have once more been able to break the silence that the Islamic Republic has imposed upon the society. The Islamic Republic has been trying to give this impression that all the oppression, including the mandatory veil, is because of Iranian people, especially Iranian women's culture. This is what the culture is, to have marriage for females at the age of nine, that they call their culture.

This prize has broken that silence and has created a space for people like Narges Mohammadi to feel not alone. One of the things that I experienced when I was in Iran is that the regime tried to tell the people that you are isolated, the world doesn't care about you, the world doesn't want you to be a part of it. The fact that the world responds sometimes, as in the case of the Nobel Prize, is not only great for Narges, but it is also great for all Iranians, especially Iranian women, who today feel less lonely.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, again, an invitation to any Iranians listening or Iranian Americans, your reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded today to Narges Mohammadi, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If this is a name that's known to you, not known to many of our listeners who don't have connections to Iran, call and tell us what Narges Mohammadi means to you, what you think she means to the country of Iran, and to the world. 212-433-WNYC, call or text 212-433-9692.

Azar Nafisi, let me stay with you. I want to ask you about a letter that Mohammadi wrote to CNN before the prize was awarded in which he drew a direct link between the political repression coming from the Iranian regime and the way that repression is predicated on how women are literally policed over how they dress. She wrote, "The mandatory hijab showcases the image of domination, subjugation, and control over women, which when extended, makes the control over the entire society smooth and achievable." I think you were just getting at this idea, but maybe talk even more about it, that fighting for women's freedom in that way is fighting for the freedom of all of society.

Azar Nafisi: It seems as if it always begins with women. Women, especially in countries like Iran or Afghanistan, have become canaries in the coal mine. You want to know how free that country is, you go to the freedom of its women. Mohammadi is completely right. For Iranian women and for the Iranian people, this fight is not just political or ideological. They're not just fighting a political system. For them this fight is existential. The mandatory hijab imposes a fake identity on all Iranian women who don't want to wear it and does disservice to women who genuinely want to wear it but support those who refuse to wear the hijab.

Hijab has become a symbol of your attitude towards the government. If you disagree with the mandatory hijab, you are disagreeing with the government directly, and that is why they are so violent. Summer talked about how Narges is not afraid of the regime, and she is not. Since 1998 when she was first arrested until today, she has undergone all sorts of hardships and horrendous punishments and she has resisted. Narges represents Iranian people and Iranian women, and Iranian women today fighting for their freedom, for their existence, for their life, fighting for their freedom, are fighting for freedom in the rest of the world.

Brian Lehrer: Summer Lopez of PEN America, the organization that Narges directed, The Defenders of Human Rights Center, was founded by Shirin Ebadi, herself a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Can you talk about the effect, if any, that prizes like the Nobel Peace Prize or PEN America's Freedom to Write Award, which you gave to Narges this year, have? Do these matter? Historically, do these matter?

Summer Lopez: Yes, I think they absolutely do, and we have seen that with The PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, which we give out each year to a writer who is imprisoned somewhere in the world for their work, for their activism, and their exercise of freedom of expression. We've been giving that out since 1987, and of the 53 jailed writers who've been honored since that time, we've seen 46 of them released within an average of about 18 months.

I think that is due in part to the global attention and pressure that can be galvanized by an award like this. That's why we selected Narges for this, because we felt like, first of all, she was emblematic of so much of what is happening in Iran right now, and Iran also is one of the worst repressors of writers and freedom of expression in the world. Of course, we also published a Freedom to Write index once a year that tracks the detention and imprisonment of writers around the world.

Iran was number two on the list last year. 57 writers imprisoned. Many of them in connection with the protests. We wanted to really highlight the work that those writers and activists are doing to continue to make their voices heard. We really do believe that this attention is essential, both to ensure that people don't feel alone, as Azar was saying, that people sense the solidarity from around the world, that they know their voices are heard, and because we do believe that that pressure and that public attention can help improve their conditions, and ideally, ensure their release.

I think that the goal of these governments is to silence people's voices, is to ensure that the world can't hear from them. Narges has particularly been so persistent about ensuring that even from behind bars, as you say, she's still in the pages of The New York Times. She is heard, and we wanted to ensure that as well. This award just gives tremendous weight to her voice and counters those efforts to silence her.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts, "Women Against Fundamentalism, absolute necessity for social justice and freedom." Another listener texts, "Women's rights are human rights, and human rights are women's rights. Until everyone has their human rights, no one will be free." Claudia in Riverdale is calling in. You're on WNYC, Claudia. Hi.

Claudia: Good morning. I was so deeply moved by this award this morning, and I don't usually react as strongly to the Nobel Peace Prize. The first thing I did was I contacted my two adult daughters, and I said, "You have to read this. You have to learn about this, and you have to tell your friends about this." I'm just encouraging all your listeners with children to please do the same because this is so incredibly moving, important, and enlightening for the world.

Brian Lehrer: Claudia, thank you very much. I mentioned in the intro, Summer, I'll go to you first on this, that the Nobel Prize Committee posted a poll on their site. I saw it this morning, along with the announcement of the prize, and the question that they posed was, do you agree that equal rights for all is a prerequisite for peace? I wonder if you have any reflections on that. It seems absurd on one level to poll the global public on whether they're for or against equal rights for all, but then they put it in this very particular way. Do you agree that human rights for all is a prerequisite for peace? I wonder if you saw that and if you have an understanding of what they're getting at.

Summer Lopez: I think it's a really interesting and important question. I think that sometimes there is a sense that human rights, democracy, and freedoms can be sacrificed in the name of achieving peace, that somehow you can achieve stability without those things. I think that's an utter falsehood. I think that these things are absolutely essential to ensuring the stability of countries, of societies, and of our world.

I fundamentally believe that these things are essential to achieving peace, but I think it is a way in which sometimes people don't think about that connection, or they might think about it in the opposite way. I think at a moment when we are facing a global resurgence of authoritarianism, uncertainty about democracy and what it means for people, and in this country as well, fights over freedom of expression, threats to writers. We are also working heavily on the book bans we're seeing across this country right now. I think it's essential that we think about these things, not only in terms of what they mean for women fighting for their rights in Iran, but in terms of what they mean for us fighting for our own democracy here.

Brian Lehrer: Azar, were you aware of that question on the Nobel side, or have any reflections on it or how it's worded? Do you agree that equal rights for all is a prerequisite for peace? That's a poll that they put on their website today.

Azar Nafisi: Yes. I agree with Summer. When I first came back to US, one of the things that surprised me was the way in foreign policy they first of all limited themselves only to politics, and as Iran and Afghanistan have shown, it is not just about politics, it's about the whole culture, it's about a whole way of looking at life and changing the kind of life that brings about oppression.

Freedom in Ukraine, freedom in Iran, freedom in Afghanistan, it guarantees freedom in United States. Coming from a place like Iran where it has killed its poets and writers, where it has given the fatwa against [unintelligible 00:17:13] which-- Coming from there, I see how pragmatic it is to be fighting for your own specific freedom, but link it to freedom for all.

It is pragmatic because a democratic Iran, for example, in the region, would be to the advantage of a democratic America. We see today in America how easy it is to fall into the skirts of repression, and beginning with book banning, which PEN is so active in right now. That is how it started in Iran as well. First, they burn books, then they kill people. That saying is very true. I do believe that peace is directly related to equal rights for all.

Brian Lehrer: A listener tweets this about your older book, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Listener writes, "Reading Lolita in Tehran is a wonderful book that gives a profound picture of the lives of women in Iran under the Islamic "Republic"," and they put Republican quotes. Azar, do you have a thought about the question that I asked Summer earlier about whether this prize or the prize to Shirin Ebadi which was 20 years ago now, or the Nobel Peace Prize in general, or prizes like PEN America gives out do matter to human rights or peace in the world, or are they just fodder for media chatter and elite chatter and they don't really change all that much?

Azar Nafisi: Oh, no. They're not just fodder for media [unintelligible 00:19:23] although the media does turn it into fodder at times. It is very, very important to connect to movement groups, individuals who live in countries like Iran. It is very important to tell them that we are with you. We share the same principles. We share the same heart and mind. I think that in Iran, you pine away if you're not connected in some creative and dynamic way to the world.

Iranian people, especially with their recent uprising, have invited the world into their hearts and the world is responding. I do believe that Nobel Prize or prizes given out by organizations like PEN play a very, very important role in creating the spaces in a country like Iran that has been taken away from people, bringing them back their confiscated spaces.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts, "I wish we had people in Congress with the courage of Narges Mohammadi."

Azar Nafisi: Yes, definitely.

Brian Lehrer: Fatima in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Fatima.

Fatima: Hello. Good morning, Brian. Thank you so much for giving time for this important news. I'm Muslim. I wear the hijab. I have the freedom of wearing my hijab in Brooklyn, in New York, in America. I really celebrate this author and this prize. The same way that I do not want to see women oppressed in Iran and forced to wear their hijab, the same way your guest this morning is saying, there are those who want to wear it and those who do not want to wear it. That oppression can be everywhere.

Like in France, where I do not have the freedom of wearing my hijab. We need to be vigilant about freedom for women and rights of women. They can do whatever they want with their bodies. They can do contraception. It's a larger, larger picture and conversation, but as your guest said, it starts with the women. The other thing that I want to say, just to mention to your guests, the first time I saw a person with a hijab in my high school, which was a French [unintelligible 00:22:07] that was just after Khomeini got the power in Iran. Then everybody starts wearing it around [unintelligible 00:22:16] even though we are a very secular country in North Africa.

I just celebrate this award. It's good for all women. I want to add one more thing. In the holy book of Quran, there is one chapter, which is only for the women and not for the men, for the women. The rights of the women are within Islam, are within everything else, but oppression is not in Islam. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much for your time.

Brian Lehrer: Fatima, thank you very much. Azar, I'll go back to you on that as she talks about societies where the hijab is mandatory, societies where the hijab is banned.

Azar Nafisi: I agree with her that we should give women the right to choose how they want to appear in public, whether with hijab or without hijab. I also think that we need dialogue and discourse over these issues. Societies like Iran or like United States even, they're too polarized to have genuine dialogue. My grandmother never took off her hijab. She wore her hijab all her life. She used to cry and say that the way that this regime is treating women, forcing them, forcing my daughters and my granddaughters to wear the hijab, this is not real Islam. This is not my Islam. That's what she used to say.

My mother, who also claimed to be Muslim, never wore the hijab and yet these two women lived together and loved one another, and thrived in one another's company. What I'm trying to say is that the Islamic Republic has been cheating us by saying that it represents Islam. It doesn't represent any religion. It represents a totalitarian ideology. It is far closer to fascist [inaudible 00:24:39] or Stalinist communism than it is to different progressive interpretations of Islam.

We need to have a clean, unbiased discussion around these issues. That is how freedom can become accessible to us, through these kind of exchanges. One last thing I wanted to say. Some of the images coming from inside Iran, they show women in public places. Those women who are not wearing the hijab are offering flowers to the women who are wearing the hijab. Some women wearing the hijab have been opposed to the Islamic Republic. Things are much more complicated than politics makes us believe.

Brian Lehrer: Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and her most recent book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times and Summer Lopez, who heads the Free Expression Program at PEN America. Narges Mohammadi, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize today was also the recipient of PEN America's Freedom to Write Award this year. Thank you both so much for coming on on this occasion.

Azar Nafisi: Thank you.

Summer Lopez: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More to come.

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