Word: imams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...money to buy video recorders. The regime's efforts to eradicate all Western influences, and especially such evils as music, dance and free speech, have spawned a thirst for whatever the Islamic republic denounces as sinful. Example: the continuing popularity of a satirical videotaped movie called Samad Becomes the Imam, featuring a goofy, rustic character who emerges as the supreme ruler of the Islamic state...
Faithful Shi'ites admit only to the authority of Muhammad and the Twelve Imams, who comprise Ali, Hussein and certain of their direct descendants. The Shi'ites consider the Twelve to be mediators between God and man. Though the Twelfth and last Imam went into hiding in A.D. 940, Shi'ites believe that he will re-emerge to rule the world as the messianic Mahdi. Until that time, the Shi'ite clergy are responsible for interpreting Islam. The Ayatullah Khomeini, however, has gone one step further by establishing his government as a regency for the Mahdi. Khomeini, who claims descent...
...neighboring Syria, Mosbah Mohammed Gharibi, was killed in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley when gunmen raked his car with machine-gun fire. The Bekaa is a ! stronghold of Lebanese Shi'ites who still blame Libyan Leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi for the 1978 disappearance and possible murder of their spiritual leader, Imam Moussa Sadr. The assumption in Beirut was that the diplomat's killing was the latest in a series of retaliatory strikes by the Lebanese Shi'ites at their Libyan enemies...
...evidence suggests that the aging Ayatollah continues to solicit views from a variety of cleric and non-cleric representatives of political institutions and even some cleric outside the government, notably his son, Ahmed. When the Imam feels strongly about an issue, he makes the ultimate decision, which is binding on all, regardless of the advice of some or even all his aides. When he does not, he may delegate limited authority to others, as in the case of the 1981 U.S. hostage crisis, where he let the legislature resolve the matter...
...murky equations of the Middle East, power is usually bought with gunpowder. Johns Hopkins Professor Fouad Ajami, author of the recently published The Vanished Imam, a profile of Moussa Sadr, the charismatic Shi'ite cleric and political leader, calls the Shi'ites the "stepchildren of the Arab world." After a docile history centered on agriculture, they first took up arms in a serious way when Lebanon's civil war broke out, in 1975. But it was not until 1982, when the Israelis invaded Lebanon, that the stage was set for the explosion of Shi'ite power...