Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Tehran, the political situation deteriorated markedly as the week passed. The rumors about Khomeini's health started after a Thursday meeting in Qum. "I'm not feeling well," confessed the Ayatullah to his followers. He then launched into a feverish attack on the U.S. Said he: "The U.S. has grabbed our money just like thieves. We should not fall for their propaganda." An aide reported that Khomeini was suffering from a flu virus communicated to him by "various visitors who have come to Qum in that condition." Said one observer: "The Imam has never sounded this bad before...
Such scenes reinforced the U.S. concern that the Iranian government and even Khomeini himself were being swept along by events. But from the Ayatullah's point of view, there was ample reason to welcome some political diversion. He has fared poorly in bringing the Iranian economy back to prerevolutionary levels. Industry is estimated to be operating at only 40% of capacity. With workers' councils sitting in on managerial decisions, many managers are afraid to make decisions on anything but issuing paychecks. Chaos prevails at the docks and at highway customs posts along the main truck route from Europe. Inflation...
...Shah, few perceive him as an "Iranian Hitler," as Iranian revolutionaries now call him, charging that his forces slaughtered 10,000 Iranian civilians in the months before the monarchy collapsed. Even fewer Americans would be prepared to allow the Shah to be returned to Iran involuntarily to face the Ayatullah's revolutionary justice...
...what extent was the student action-and the Ayatullah Khomeini's endorsement of it-in accordance with Islamic law? Experts differ. Zaki Badawi, Egyptian director of the Islamic Cultural Center in London, argues that "the demand for the return of the Shah to face trial in Iran is in agreement with Muslim law." Islam holds that "no one is above the law and law is supreme. If a crime is committed by a ruler, an emperor, he is as liable to punishment for it as the meanest and commonest of his subjects." As a precedent, one Cairo expert notes...
...Sadat, a devout Muslim, has denounced Khomeini as a "lunatic" and forthrightiy condemned the seizure of the hostages. "This is not Islam," he said. "Islam teaches love, tolerance and mercy." One of the ranking experts on Islamic law, at Cairo's ancient Al Azhar University, charges that the Ayatullah's "evil hunger for the death of a sick man is a towering crime under Islamic law." Islam "considers any sick or dying person with extreme humility," he says. Rouhollah Ramanzani, an Iranian scholar teaching at the University of Virginia, points out that according to the Islamic code...