In 2003, I read Reading Lolita in Tehran, the lyrically written and powerful story of how one literature professor, Azar Nafisi, found a way to continue to share the great works of literature with a few of her students after that activity became a severely punishable offence under the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomaini. Ms. Nafisi eventually left Iran and now lives in Washington, where she continues to search for ways to push against the repressive reality in her native country.
In 2006, I read Iran Awakening, the moving and inspiring autobiography of Shirin Ebadi, lawyer, human-rights activist and Nobel laureate. She shares in vivid detail how women's rights in Iran have been systematically and brutally removed. Ms. Ebadi, who has devoted her life to helping women try to get the most modest levels of legal justice, was forced to flee her country last year and now lives in England, where she continues to work tirelessly on behalf of the women of Iran.
In 2007, I read Prisoner of Tehran - for me, the most moving of all. At 16, Marina Nemat was arrested and thrown into Evin prison in Tehran for nothing more than asking why math was no longer being taught at her school. For more than two years, she was tortured and raped, and only narrowly escaped being tied to a stake and shot. By some bizarre stroke of luck, she was eventually released and immigrated to Canada where, after 17 years, she broke her silence about what had happened to her.
With each story, I felt this incredible sense of rage that, in the 21st century, a governing regime could actually get away with treating women so brutally, essentially as chattel - an all-powerful, repressive regime that, among other things, supports stoning women to death as a legitimate form of punishment. But then my day-to-day life would take over and my rage would dissipate.
Last week, like so many in the world, I was again horrified when I read that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old Iranian woman, had been sentenced to be stoned to death for an alleged act of adultery. I had just attended an evening with Elie Wiesel, human-rights teacher to the world. His words still echoed in my mind: "The opposite of love is not hate. … It is indifference." I knew I could not just go to bed.
So began an initiative that, given the power of our digital society, now has traction around the world. Along with a handful of very special women, including the three mentioned above, we launched www.freesakineh.org, a web-based petition addressed to the leaders of Iran. We reached out to friends, who reached out to others, who, in turn, kept expanding our network - more than 70,000 people have now signed the petition.
To be clear, this initiative is just one of many international efforts designed to bring pressure on the Iranian government to free a woman who has already paid a heavy price for what must have been, at worst, a private offence. (She was first convicted in 2006 of having an "illicit relationship" and received 99 lashes. At a subsequent trial, she was convicted of adultery and sentenced to death.)
These past few days have provided a direct and personal experience with the empowering nature of the Internet - how it enables those of us who feel so often that we want to make a difference but hold back because the problems we are trying to fix seem insurmountable.
Natan Sharansky, the Russian dissident who spent years in the Gulag before eventually being freed in a prisoner swap, writes eloquently about how he survived his extreme detention because he knew there were people in the "sane" world working day and night for his freedom. Those unfairly imprisoned, he repeats over and over, need to know they are not forgotten. Today, all those women in Iran without human rights need to know they are not and will not be forgotten.
It is not yet clear what will happen to Ms. Mohammadi Ashtiani. But even if we collectively succeed in gaining her freedom, it is only the beginning. For adultery alone, more than two dozen other women await execution.
The time has come for those of us who can speak without fear of reprisal to use our individual and collective voices to support the women of Iran who are truly under siege. Let's heed Shirin Ebadi's call to "get as noisy as you can."
We have a voice. We have the power. Let's be noisy.
Heather Reisman is CEO of Indigo Books & Music.