Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Absolutely not. The Ayatullah is made of sterner stuff than that. The very next day the Iranian revolutionary leader, 88, issued a statement rejecting Rushdie's apology and declaring flatly, "It is incumbent on every Muslim to do everything possible to send him to hell." Three days later, in a speech to a group of Iranian clerics, Khomeini added that nothing, not even Western economic sanctions, would "force us to retreat and forgo implementation of God's decree...
...first days after the Ayatullah's shocking death threat, governments and the general public alike in the U.S. and Western Europe were slow to react. Who could believe that a book that practically nobody had read -- and an often obscure if sometimes brilliant one, at that -- was the catalyst precipitating a bizarre international crisis...
...West, the issue largely seemed to resolve itself into a question of free speech. But in Iran, a vastly different phenomenon was taking shape: the Ayatullah had seized upon Rushdie's book as a flaming spear with which to halt his country's creeping trend toward moderation. Within days, the "liberals" who had seemed to be in the ascendant in Tehran dropped from sight. They had been trying to strengthen diplomatic and economic ties with the West in order to rebuild the country following its disastrous eight-year war with Iraq...
...most astonishing ideological pirouette was performed by President Khamenei, who had seemingly tried to defuse the crisis a few days earlier when he spoke of Rushdie's possible repentance. But Khamenei sounded almost as fierce as the Ayatullah last week, saying of the death edict, "The long black arrow has been slung and is now traveling toward its target. There is nothing more that can be done." Western governments, he added, had made the mistake of confusing "freedom of expression with the freedom to insult 1 billion Muslims...
...most significant aspect of the Ayatullah's "send him to hell" speech was his emphasis on the rifts within his own government and his fears about the influence of those he called "misled liberals." Said Khomeini: "We should not, for the sake of pleasing several sellout liberals, act in a way that gives the impression that the Islamic Republic of Iran is deviating from its principled positions." Suddenly Rushdie's purported blasphemy seemed minor compared with the sins of Iranian officials who had dared support a renewal of ties with the decadent West...