Word: islamized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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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...
...major part in the wave of Muslim fanaticism and anti-American violence that swept far beyond Iran. In Saudi Arabia, possessor of the world's greatest reserves of oil and American dollars, a band of extreme religious zealots seized the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest shrine in all Islam (see WORLD). In Pakistan, a mob enraged by radio reports claiming that the U.S. had inspired the attack on the Mecca mosque stormed and set fire to the U.S. embassy. They left the modernistic, 30-acre compound a gutted ruin. Two Americans were killed; 90 others were rescued after seven...
...shred of evidence for the accusation, and U.S. State Department Spokesman Hodding Carter promptly described it as an "outright, knowing lie." Indeed, the assailants were fundamentalist Muslims whose opposition to all Western influence is similar to Khomeini's archaic views. But though the U.S. has no quarrel with Islam, the report of U.S. complicity was widely believed in Islamic countries...
...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...