Iran’s Narges Mohammedi was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. She follows in Shirin Ebadi’s footsteps. Together they represent Iranian women. The bravest of our generation.

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With freedom comes peace. As long as women are not free, no one is free. And there is no peace either. Therefore, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is the only one eligible this year.

“The more they capture us, the stronger we become,” Narges Mohammadi wrote in the New York Times on September 16.

Just a few weeks later, he got help moving. He received the Nobel Peace Prize, and with it even more power in one of the most important freedom struggles of our time.

“I will never stop fighting for democracy, freedom and equality,” he said in response to the peace prize. This will make him more persistent, more motivated, full of hope and enthusiasm in moving forward, he continued.

This peace gift was a lifeline for Mohammadi, and a vitamin injection for Iran’s women’s rebellion.

Which started after the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini, and against the brutal priest who was anti-human and anti-woman in Iran.

Narges Mohammedi has been at the center of an insurgency for decades. Like other village women.

Shirin Ebadi (75), who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her opposition to the same priest exactly 20 years ago. A bare-headed, cropped Ebadi stood in Oslo City Hall in 2003 and pointed her nose at the mullahs.

Those who force, whip and punish women who wear the hijab.

The new peace prize winner has received a message today at the notorious Evin prison. Even in captivity they have not been able to catch the fight. He sings a war cry: Zan, zindagi, azadi – woman, life, freedom.

But there was no freedom in sight for Mohammadi. He will probably be jailed when the peace prize is awarded in December. Narges Mohammedi continues to carry on his legacy. He is vice president of the human rights organization Ebadi founded.

Rare tenacity and continuity in the struggle for freedom has now borne fruit for the second time.

In late August, Shirin Ebadi was at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. Then he talked about the enemy. The enemy she, Mohammedi, and Iranian women were fighting.

“You have to know who the enemy is so you can fight him.”

That’s what Ebadi said when I asked how she and Iranian women survive year after year. The enemy is not Islam, he continued.

“The enemy is patriarchal culture, namely dark people.”

This male-dominated system is what Iranian women and Narges Mohammadi are fighting against. While Ebadi was harassed and threatened by the regime, Mohammadi was imprisoned and robbed of everything he held dear. Especially Ali and Kiana’s children.

During the several years he was imprisoned, he was sentenced to 154 lashes and had to go on hunger strike to be able to talk to children by telephone. The torture-like treatment continues – and so does the resistance.

Narges Mohammadi’s quest for freedom is unparalleled.

But her confession is the same as that of all Iranian women. And Afghans, as well as women around the world who are treated inhumanely.

The Nobel Peace Prize is a reminder that women will never come to terms with oppression and discrimination. That spark will always be there. And it will light up. And one day it will burn down the system, no matter how good, integrated, brutal, and years old it is.

This has happened before. Patriarchy has collapsed in many countries over the last 200 years. Today, it is Iranian women who are showing the way. They are waging one of the most important, fundamental and real freedom struggles of our time.

In his own name. In the name of all those oppressed, gagged, hurt, murdered and dehumanized by evil people and patriarchies around the world.