Word: ayatullah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cups of tea, plates of sugary cookies and in one case a late-night pizza to go, Asgharzadeh and top planners Mohsen Mirdammadi, today a political-science professor, and Abbas Abdi, an outspoken newspaper editor, revealed fresh insights into their moment of history. They denied, to start with, that Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had put them up to it. "The idea came to me while I was studying," Asgharzadeh recalled, joking. "I didn't mind getting away from the books...
Abdollah Nouri does not look like a dangerous counterrevolutionary. In a nation run by clerics, he ranks among the most senior, not quite an ayatullah but a hojatolislam, or "proof of Islam." Over dates and tea in his office, the diminutive religious scholar turned newspaper publisher spoke with tones of bureaucractic conformity. But his words were far from blather. "Transferring power to the people was an objective of our revolution 20 years ago," he told TIME in a rare interview. But, he added candidly, "power has a tendency to create authoritarianism...
This week Nouri will be called before a court to answer a 44-page indictment. He stands accused of dishonoring the Ayatullah Khomeini, undermining the authority of Iran's ruling clergy and promoting relations with the U.S. If he is convicted, he faces a hefty fine, lashes of the whip or a dozen years in prison. Much more critically, Nouri will then be disqualified from heading the reform ticket in next February's elections, thus ending any chance of his becoming the powerful speaker of Iran's 270-seat parliament, the Majlis-e-Shura. A victory by Nouri is crucial...
...first scuffle with hard-liners: in an impeachment trial last year, parliament ousted him as Minister of the Interior for permitting student demonstrations. Since then, his main vehicle of dissent has been the national daily Khordad. The newspaper has published defiant antiregime opinions by prominent clerics, notably Grand Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who has been under house arrest since 1997 for questioning velayat-e-faqih, the absolute authority of the clergy. In an explosive article, a young cleric, Mohsen Kadivar, even criticized the royalist tendencies of the clerics and their treatment of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei as a shah...
Being the patron and publisher of such notions has made Nouri one of the most popular politicians in Iran--and has led to expectations that the reformists may wrest control of the Majlis from hard-line conservatives allied with Ayatullah Khamenei. The prospect of getting shut out of power, maybe for good, frightens the conservatives. Lawmakers have ignored Khatami's proposals to make elections fairer by eliminating a candidate-screening procedure, and are pushing to tighten press restrictions. Besides shutting down newspapers and jailing editors, the courts have imprisoned Khatami supporters on corruption charges...