Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...curious attempt to impose aural purity on his people, the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini earlier in the week had proposed that music be banned from national broadcasting. "Worse than opium," he said, "music is among the elements that stultify the mind of our youth." Television and radio officials said they would go along with the ban for the holy month but would decide later whether or not to resume normal musical programs...
Iran's tough-talking Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, 47, is an American-trained microbiologist who lived and worked in the U.S. for 18 years before joining the Ayatullah Khomeini's entourage in Paris last October. In a candid interview last week, he discussed the prospect of an "Irangate" scandal, the fate of his country's F-14s and other topics with TIME Tehran Bureau Chief Bruce van Voorst. Excerpts...
Events in Iran now moved even more quickly than the Ayatullah himself could have expected. Within four months of his arrival in France, Khomeini was able to make his triumphant return to Iran, where he quickly replaced the post-Shah government with a Cabinet of his own. A month later he was back in his old house in Qum, where he has been ever since, trying to guide his country's unfinished revolution...
...story house, perhaps 100 years old, on a narrow lane in the center of Qum. There is a courtyard out front and a pond, and the walls are covered with vines. The only notable piece of furniture inside is a wooden desk that Khomeini has owned for years. The Ayatullah relies heavily on his surviving son Seyyed Ahmed Khomeini, 35, who serves as a sort of chief vizier cum majordomo The Ayatullah walks with a kind of shuffling gait, but otherwise seems in fair health for a man of his years. Still, he is 79; he tires easily and rarely...
...Ayatullah, according to many who have seen him lately, seems increasingly out of touch with his own revolution, bewildered by the pace of events. But he will never surrender power easily. On his return to Qum, he told a nationwide radio and television audience: "The remaining one or two years of my life I will devote to you to keep this movement alive." He will surely try to do so for throughout his life he has rigidly held to his commitments. The real question is whether Iran has not become too secular over the past 50 years to submit...