Word: islamics
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...this time Iran's fire-eating Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had become so extreme, so demagogic, so streaked with irrationality that serious diplomats wondered how the breach could be repaired. "This is not a struggle between the United States and Iran," Khomeini declared. "It is a struggle between Islam and the infidels." He repeatedly threatened that the 49 American hostages held in the captured U.S. embassy in Tehran would be tried as spies, and possibly executed, if the U.S. does not send back the deposed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from the hospital in New York City...
...until last Saturday, after a week of retaliation and counterretaliation, that the first apparent break in the conflict came. The Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's de facto head of state, ordered the students to release the women and blacks, believed to number a dozen, who were being held hostage. "Islam grants to women a special status," explained Khomeini in announcing his decision, and blacks "have spent ages under American pressure and tyranny...
...what extent was the student action-and the Ayatullah Khomeini's endorsement of it-in accordance with Islamic law? Experts differ. Zaki Badawi, Egyptian director of the Islamic Cultural Center in London, argues that "the demand for the return of the Shah to face trial in Iran is in agreement with Muslim law." Islam holds that "no one is above the law and law is supreme. If a crime is committed by a ruler, an emperor, he is as liable to punishment for it as the meanest and commonest of his subjects." As a precedent, one Cairo expert notes...
...Islamic scholars are virtually unanimous in condemning the seizure of the hostages as contrary to the Shari'a (Islamic canon law). Says Badawi: "There is no basis in Islam for this. Islam does not justify the taking of hostages, and it also clearly states that one person cannot be punished for the crimes of another." Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, a devout Muslim, has denounced Khomeini as a "lunatic" and forthrightiy condemned the seizure of the hostages. "This is not Islam," he said. "Islam teaches love, tolerance and mercy." One of the ranking experts on Islamic law, at Cairo...
Most authorities doubted that the students would physically harm the hostages, or that Khomeini would tolerate their torture or death. Says Thomas Ricks, an Iranian expert at Georgetown University: "Nothing in Islam could justify the slaughter of the hostages, and it is unthinkable that the captors would do so, unless they were threatened by an outside attack." Professor Hamid Algar of the University of California at Berkeley notes that the Shari'a permits both the exchange of hostages and their unilateral release by captors. He also observes, however, that "one tradition is that hostages may be kept permanently...