Word: imamate
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...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...
...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 years, healthier and stronger...
...crowd picks through the offerings carefully, learning something about what makes Al Frank and Stan Weinstein and possibly also the market tick. They search for revealing new indicators or for an unknown face who has it all figured out (a hidden imam, in the jargon). They browse among new ideas, like one newsletter's espousal of the "butterfly effect," the chaos theory that a hurricane in the Caribbean may be caused by an unknown butterfly flapping its , wings six months earlier somewhere in Brazil, and that, by analogy, there are no hidden imams because it's all too complicated...
...Islamic country, others argued that the case had been blown out of proportion. Hassan Saab, an adviser to the Sunni Muslim Grand Mufti of Lebanon, called Rushdie "an insignificant writer who has attacked a great prophet." He asked, "What harm has befallen the Prophet?" In Egypt the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, Sheik Gad el-Haq Ali Gad el-Haq, noted that the net effect of the furor had been to increase the book's sales and profits "by astronomical figures." It would be far better, he suggested, if Islamic scholars prepared their own book refuting Rushdie's "lies...
...radical extremists, including students on short-term visas. Tehran-backed groups have a history of violent mischief in London, mostly bombings aimed at Iranian dissidents. Says Ian Geldard, head of research at London's Institute for the Study of Terrorism: "In the Islamic world, a call from the Imam is a full command . . . The worst of it is that this threat could remain in effect for months." Or even years. In a BBC radio interview, an exiled Iranian film director, Reza Fazeli, who himself has been the target of a Khomeini death threat and whose son was killed...