Word: ayatullah
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...been rumored to be dying of a heart condition or cancer for much of the past decade, the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, 89, has displayed remarkable longevity. Last week, though, doctors performed surgery on the religious leader to stop what was officially described as "bleeding in his digestive system." Providing a rare and somewhat bizarre glimpse at the Imam's private life, Iranian television actually broadcast scenes from the operating room...
Khomeini's illness has focused new attention on the question of his successor. Since he fired his appointed heir, Ayatullah Ali Montazeri, 65, in March, the spotlight has turned to Khomeini's son Ahmed, 43, who has been increasingly visible lately. The extent of Ahmed's influence became more apparent last week, when a 110-page memo surfaced in which he accused Montazeri of disloyalty. Khomeini the younger, however, must contend with powerful Parliamentary Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who last week emerged from a visit with the Ayatullah to declare, "God willing, we will see the Imam for long...
Those who actually read Salman Rushdie's notorious best seller The Satanic Verses may have absorbed Rushdie's brilliant perception of what the planet has become: old cultures in sudden high-velocity crisscross, a bewilderment of ethnic explosion and implosion simultaneously. The Ayatullah Khomeini's response to Rushdie is (whatever else it is) an exquisite vindication of Rushdie's point. Khomeini's Iranian revolution was exactly a violent repudiation of the new world that the Shah had sponsored. The struggle throughout the Middle East now is, among other things, a collision between Islam and the temptations and intrusions...
...Leykis of Los Angeles prefers more dramatic measures. When singer Cat Stevens expressed support of the Ayatullah Khomeini's death threat against author Salman Rushdie, Leykis donned a hard hat and crushed a pile of Stevens' records with a steamroller...
...political front, U.S. optimism also seems misplaced. Some experts are worried that the mujahedin leader who has received the lion's share of U.S. support, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a fanatic Muslim who might turn out to be Afghanistan's version of the Ayatullah Khomeini. Others wonder whether the mujahedin coalition, linked by hatred of the Najibullah regime, could stay together long enough to form an effective government...