Word: qum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Angered by the challenges to his authority, Khomeini lashed out in a speech to his followers in the holy city of Qum. In effect he declared: No more Mr. Nice Guy. His government had made a mistake, Khomeini said, in trying to be tolerant toward the dissident groups, especially leftists who encourage militancy among the minorities. "We knew they were non-Islamic, but they proved to be nonhuman." The Ayatullah also fumed at his appointed government's failure to rule effectively. Said he: "I shall come to Tehran and straighten things out in a revolutionary way if they...
Khomeini confronted the government again a few months later after it had confiscated the property of a family that contributed much of its income to the religious institutions of Qum. The Shah's police attacked the Madresseh Faizieh, killing as many as 18 young mullahs, and Khomeini fired off angry telegrams of protest to the Shah. At this point, for the first time since the days of Mossadegh, university students in Tehran came to the support of the clergy against the Shah. Khomeini wrote to then Premier Asadollah Alam: "My heart is ready for the bayonet of your troops...
...Ayatullah himself could have expected. Within four months of his arrival in France, Khomeini was able to make his triumphant return to Iran, where he quickly replaced the post-Shah government with a Cabinet of his own. A month later he was back in his old house in Qum, where he has been ever since, trying to guide his country's unfinished revolution...
When he is not meditating or receiving guests at the Madresseh Faizieh, Khomeini lives in his family home at 61 Kuche Yakhchal Ghazi. It is a soiled white, one-story house, perhaps 100 years old, on a narrow lane in the center of Qum. There is a courtyard out front and a pond, and the walls are covered with vines. The only notable piece of furniture inside is a wooden desk that Khomeini has owned for years. The Ayatullah relies heavily on his surviving son Seyyed Ahmed Khomeini, 35, who serves as a sort of chief vizier cum majordomo...
...Ayatullah, according to many who have seen him lately, seems increasingly out of touch with his own revolution, bewildered by the pace of events. But he will never surrender power easily. On his return to Qum, he told a nationwide radio and television audience: "The remaining one or two years of my life I will devote to you to keep this movement alive." He will surely try to do so for throughout his life he has rigidly held to his commitments. The real question is whether Iran has not become too secular over the past 50 years to submit...