Word: ayatullah
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When Bazargan resigned to protest the capture of the hostages, the Ayatullah made the Revolutionary Council the government in name as well as fact. Then, during the holy month known as Muharram, with popular emotion at a frenzied height as a result of the confrontation with the U.S., Khomeini expertly managed a vote on a new constitution that turned Iran into a theocracy. Approved overwhelmingly in a Dec. 2-3 referendum, the constitution provided for an elected President and parliament, but placed above them a "guardian council" of devout Muslims to make sure that nothing the elected bodies do violates...
...Ayatullah capture a revolution that started out as a leaderless explosion of resentment and hate? Primarily by playing adroitly to, and in part embodying, some of the psychological elements that made the revolt possible. There was, for example, a widespread egalitarian yearning to end the extremes of wealth and poverty that existed under the Shah ?and the rich could easily be tarred as clients of the "U.S. imperialists." Partly because of the long history of Soviet, British and then American meddling in their affairs, Iranians were and are basically xenophobic, and thus susceptible to the Ayatullah's charges that...
...hiding, but will return some day to purify the religion and institute God's reign of justice on earth. This belief gives Shi'ism a strong messianic cast, to which Khomeini appeals when he promises to expel Western influence and to turn Iran into a pure Islamic society. The Ayatullah has never claimed the title of Imam for himself, but he has done nothing to discourage its use by his followers, a fact that annoys some of his peers among the Iranian clergy. Ayatullah Seyed Kazem Sharietmadari, Khomeini's most potent rival for popular reverence, has acidly observed that...
With Khomeini's encouragement, Muslims ?not all of them Shi'ites?have staged anti-American riots in Libya, India and Bangladesh. In Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, a mob burned the U.S. embassy and killed two U.S. servicemen; the Ayatullah's reaction was "great joy." In Saudi Arabia, possessor of the world's largest oil reserves, the vulnerability of the royal family was made starkly apparent when a band of 200 to 300 well-armed raiders in November seized the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest of all Islamic shrines, which is under the protection of King Khalid...
...governments throughout the Middle East. Leaders of the House of Saud regard Khomeini as an outright menace. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat denounced Khomeini as a man who is trying to play God and whose actions are a "crime against Islam [and] an insult to humanity." Nonetheless, the Ayatullah's appeal to Muslims, Sunni as well...