Iran's official television and radio only made a brief mention of the Oslo ceremony -- and TV showed only an archive photo of Ebadi with a headscarf --, while the hardline press was scathing.

"Mrs Ebadi has not only put into question Islamic precepts by unveiling herself," fumed a statement from student members of the Basij, a radical volunteer militia attached to Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

"She has also provoked the religious sentiments of students by publicly shaking the hand of a man at Amir Kabir university, which has provoked several weeks of tensions at the university," said the statement, which was carried by the ultra-conservative Jomhuri Islami newspaper.

The Basij group is believed to have been behind an attack on Ebadi last week, when around 50 hardliners stopped her giving a speech at Al-Zahra women's university in Tehran by chanting slogans including "Death to Ebadi" and "Shirin the American, ask for pardon".

Their statement also warned university officials of a "reaction" if those involved in the attack were expelled from the campus.

The radical Ya-Lessarat weekly also plastered Ebadi on its front page, with the headline "Monafeqin (hypocrites) have no place at university" -- using a term the regime usually reserves for the Iraq-based People's Mujahedeen armed opposition group.

Ebadi, whose campaign for the rights of women and children and her defence of dissidents has earned her the wrath of hardliners, did not escape attention in other conservative papers.

On Monday, Kayhan newspaper branded her "Sharon Ebadi" -- a reference to the hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

In a caricature, it showed the two main enemies of the Islamic republic -- Sharon and US President George W. Bush -- embracing, with Bush asking, "How are you, Shirin?", to which the Israeli leader replies: "No, I'm Sharon".

As for the reformist press, or at least those who have escaped a wave of newspaper closures ordered by the hardline judiciary, one paper -- Nassim Saba -- dared to carry a picture, albeit slightly blurred, of Ebadi without a headscarf.

And in the pro-reform Yas-e-No newspaper, dissident intellectual Hashem Aghajari -- sentenced to death last year for blasphemy and now awaiting a review of his sentence -- was quoted as saying that "defending a modern Islam is no small crime in the eyes of fundamentalists".

"That it why I am now behind bars," he wrote.

The paper also carried comments by female reformist MP Elaheh Koulaie who demanded to know "why (Shirin Ebadi) was the subject of such attacks".

The Nobel laureate's critics, the MP argued, were merely those "who cannot accept a democratic interpretation of Islam".

WAR.WIRE