Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi spoke to a packed auditorium at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center on May 18, touching on Iran’s feminist movement, the country’s upcoming June elections, and the need for peace between Iran and the United States.

 The question-and-answer discussion with Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer and human rights advocate, was moderated by Janet Benshoof, president and founder of the Global Justice Center in San Francisco. The first Iranian woman to preside over a legislative court, Ebadi addressed the present and future of Iranian-American relations, bringing a striking thoughtfulness to controversial topics.

“I believe in every country we have to begin with the commonality of our principles, rather than the differences,” said Ebadi, speaking through a translator.

While acknowledging that Iran has far to go in ensuring equal rights for women — at one point observing that a woman in Iran is legally worth only half as much as a man — she urged Americans to learn more about Iran.

“I believe that here and in the world many people have a narrow, wrong impression of Iran,” said Ebadi. “Show Iran exactly as it is — no darker, and no better, than what it is.”

Ebadi was among Iran’s first crop of female judges when a spate of anti-feminist laws enacted after the 1979 Islamic revolution forbade women from passing sentence on men. Reduced to clerking in the court she once ran, Ebadi chose to resign and soon became the leader of Iran’s fledgling feminist movement.

Ebadi’s educated Farsi and dry wit, which had some Farsi-speaking audience members chuckling appreciatively, is the product of a fierce intelligence: she was the first woman in 1965 to obtain a law degree from Tehran University, and she has founded three nonprofit organizations to protect the rights of women and children. Ebadi’s Association for Human Rights Advocates has provided pro bono legal help to 65 percent of Iran’s political prisoners, Ebadi estimated, including the recently released U.S.-Iranian journalist, Roxana Saberi.

Ebadi, 62, made headlines in January, when she was threatened in her home in Tehran by a mob that shouted slogans against her and vandalized her home. In December, Iranian authorities shut down Ebadi’s Centerfor the Defense of Human Rights and also confiscated her computer and tax records.

Though censored, suppressed, and even jailed (in 2000, she spent a month in solitary confinement after defending the family of a student killed by Tehran police) Ebadi has continued to speak out. Her latest initiative is the Million Signatures Campaign, a campaign aimed at repealing laws discriminating against women. She has also pushed for Iran and the U.S. to become members of the International Criminal Court to try human rights cases and an International Convention to eradicate global poverty.

 In addition to campaigning on behalf of Iranian women, Ebadi has written five books, four dissertations on various aspects of Iran’s legal system, and a memoir, Iran Awakening, which was recently issued in paperback (Random House: $14.95).

 As Ebadi made her comments, laughter and applause spread in two waves across the audience; among the 252 ticketholders were many Bay Area Iranians, and their audible reactions would often die down just as the interpreter made her understood to English-speaking listeners. Ebadi sees such Iranian expatriates as a means to spread peace and understanding.

“There are two million of you living in this country,” she observed in response to a Farsi-speaking questioner, “and if each has five relatives or friends still living in Iran, imagine how many people onboth sides want peace.”