Word: khomeini
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Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he wants to negotiate on nukes but is not tamping down his strong rhetoric. His defiance of the West is in the mold of the AYATULLAH KHOMEINI, who led Iran's Islamic revolution...
...Islamic fundamentalism across the fragile, oil-rich states that line the Persian Gulf and to upset the global balance of power. He has sought his goals openly in Iran's seven-year war with Iraq, and he has promoted them stealthily through terrorist bombings and kidnapings abroad. Now Khomeini's brooding presence loomed larger than ever as he seemed ready, even eager, to take on a host of nations ... The greatest threat to Khomeini's Iran may finally come not from the battlefield but from the country's almost suicidal tendency to cut itself off from the rest...
Excuse me? In fact, the opposite is the case. The Muslim world needs to do something to appease the West. Since Ayatullah Khomeini declared a death sentence against Salman Rushdie for how he depicted Muhammad in his book The Satanic Verses, Islamic radicals have been essentially threatening the free discussion of their religion and politics in the West. Rushdie escaped with his life. But Pim Fortuyn, a Dutch politician who stood up against Muslim immigrant hostility to equality for women and gays, was murdered on the street. Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who offended strict Muslims, was killed thereafter...
...exceptions (Hitler was otherwise engaged), we've done interviews with almost every Man or Woman of the Year in the past several decades. Some, of course, are easier than others. Our correspondent was expelled from Iran only days after his Man of the Year interview with the Ayatullah Khomeini (1979) was published, and we were able to print an interview with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa (1981) when Poland was under martial law thanks only to a correspondent's ingenuity: he sewed the transcript into the lining of his overcoat and smuggled it out. Except in such obviously dicey situations...
...EASIER INTERVIEW: THE SHAH OF IRAN OR AYATULLAH KHOMEINI? The Shah of Iran. He wanted to be on TV. He was comfortable with being asked any question as long as you preceded it with "Your Majesty." When I interviewed the Ayatullah, he walked in, I put out my hand and he swept past me, sat down and waited for the questions. They had been approved in advance, but I asked one they did not approve. I thought, What are they going to do? Take me hostage? "Anwar Sadat says you are a lunatic," I asked. Of course, he doesn...