I refer to the Malaysiakini report Rais urges UM to lift Ebadi speech ban .

I don't usually think of Rais Yatim as a stout feminist or human rights stalwart (joining the ranks of Umno's liberals-by-expediency?), but what a spectacle!

As foreign minister, his revocation of the ‘advice’ of Wisma Putra’s Middle East and North Africa Division Secretary Dr Hasrul Sani Mujtabar - that the Universiti Malaya should withdraw its invitation to Iran’s 2003 Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi in order to ‘keep close ties between Malaysia and Iran’ - has put Rafiah Salim, Malaysia's first woman vice-chancellor, in an awkward light. Among other things, it reminded me of Zoe Williams’ remark in a Guardian column (July 4, 2007):

‘… the first principle of feminism is that you don't need to be a woman to be a feminist …’ (or to paraphrase her in our local context, Malaysia doesn't need more women vice-chancellors, it needs more feminist vice-chancellors, who have the spine to defend academic and intellectual autonomy).

Sadly, we witness instead a Malaysian Muslim woman lawyer, the vice-chancellor and former dean of law at the Universiti Malaya, dis-inviting an Iranian Muslim woman lawyer, a Nobel laureate who teaches law, gender, and human rights at the University of Tehran, ‘out of respect for our Iranian students (at UM) who were not very happy’.

Insulting a highly respected and courageous activist for the rights of women, children, and refugees is evidently a lesser sin.

Quite apart from the sheer absurdity (and dis-ingenuity) of Iranian students at UM dictating our foreign policy (not to mention the limits of permissible discourse at our aspiring ‘apex university’), it appears that the VC is bowing to the dictates not of the higher education ministry but of a functionary of the foreign ministry! (who has since been ‘overruled’ by his boss). Subservience internationalised, it seems.

Perhaps the RM16 billion gas deal between Iranian and Malaysian investors, to develop the Golshan and Ferdows gas fields in southern Iran is not irrelevant. This was reportedly the largest investment in Iran’s energy sector to date, a powerful disincentive to play host to a prominent internal critic of the Iranian government.

As for Shirin Ebadi being a Western stooge, an unwitting pawn in the ‘epic struggle’ between the West and the Muslim world, the truth is rather more nuanced.

Here’s an excerpt from an entry on Shirin Ebadi posted at Wikipedia:

‘Ebadi expresses a nationalist love of Iran and a less than enchanted view of the Western world. She opposed the pro-Western Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), initially supported the Islamic Revolution, remembers the CIA’s 1953 overthrow of [nationalist] prime minister Mohammed Mosaddeq with rage, and feels anger toward family and friends who have emigrated to Western countries with better job opportunities …

'At a press conference shortly after the Peace Prize announcement, Ebadi herself explicitly rejected foreign interference in the country's affairs: ‘The fight for human rights is conducted in Iran by the Iranian people, and we are against any foreign intervention in Iran.’

Perhaps the vice-chancellor would be better placed at Wisma Putra, since this sorry episode strikes me more as an exercise in ‘diplomacy’ (bungled as it were), as opposed to the kind of robust and reasoned exchanges one would expect of an academic institution – merciless criticism of all things existing.

I occasionally make disparaging remarks about diplomacy masquerading as social science, but it is truly pathetic to see such subservience masquerading as diplomacy.