Word: clericalization
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...became Iran's religious leader in 1989 after the death of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Because the Iranian Constitution grants the Supreme Leader veto power over the President's decisions, it is Khamenei who has the final say in high matters of state. As a result, the low-profile cleric--he shuns interviews with journalists--is the figure who will probably determine whether the nuclear dispute is resolved peacefully or hurtles Iran toward a confrontation with the U.S. and its allies...
...what does Khamenei want? In Tehran, speculation about the cleric's ambitions and the future of his partnership with Ahmadinejad is a parlor game of government insiders. Though Khomeini's doctrine of velayet-e faqih grants Khamenei divine right to rule, Khamenei is a breed apart from most Shi'ite mullahs, who still abide by premodern strictures. "He wears a watch," says an intimate, to illustrate how Khamenei differs from his fellow clerics. He hikes in jeans in Tehran's Alborz Mountains and plays the tar, a traditional Iranian stringed instrument. On religious issues, Khamenei is a conservative...
...RELEASED. Abubakar Ba'asyir, 67, Indonesian cleric convicted of criminal conspiracy in the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people; after serving 26 months in prison; in Jakarta. Upon leaving the city's Cipinang prison, Abubakar denounced the U.S. as a "state terrorist." Australian President John Howard, whose country lost 88 citizens in Bali, said millions of Australians were "extremely disappointed, even distressed" that the cleric had been set free...
...from the Americans, so there was a built-in propensity to believe that many, or most, Iraqis killed by U.S. forces were innocent victims of oppression. That is especially true in the Sunni triangle, but many Shi'ites believe it too, especially those who follow the radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Abu Ghraib scandal merely confirmed what they had suspected all along, that George Bush's soldiers were no different from Saddam's. Haditha was simply more of the same. But the possibility that Americans may be punished for killing Iraqis--that, at least, is new. Saddam...
...military and diplomatic officials have claimed that radical cleric Muqtada Al Sadr - accused by the U.S. of sectarian reprisals in Baghad and elsewhere in southern Iraq - and the country's largest Shi'ite party have started to send in small numbers of their armed loyalists. The status of Kirkuk, officially to be decided in a referendum by the end of 2007, is one of the most contentious issues facing the new Iraqi government; though claimed by the Kurds, it is controlled by Baghdad, which is reluctant to part with its vast oilfields...