Word: qum
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...Iran, for his "confidence in the holy writ of Islam" and his "past record in the national and Islamic struggle." By last week, the 78-year-old Shi'ite leader's view had changed sharply. Speaking to theological students at his headquarters in the holy city of Qum, he rapped his slightly younger (71) appointee. "You are weak, mister," he thundered. He also lambasted Bazargan's 17-member Cabinet as "weak characters" who believe that "everything should be copied from the West." Under Bazargan, Khomeini scoffed, "the nation lives in caves and nothing has changed." To make...
...three days, the 300,000 residents of the holy city of Qum had carefully scrubbed the dusty streets and minareted buildings, making ready for the Ayatullah's return. Now, hundreds of thousands of people, chanting "God is great," lined the narrow highway from Tehran to catch a glimpse of him as his motorcade drove by. When the blue Mercedes bearing the 78-year-old Shi'ite leader neared the city, the throng burst through a cordon of police and armed Islamic guerrillas. It engulfed the car in a sea of humanity so dense that it took nearly...
Those who know the Ayatullah expect that eventually he will settle in the Shi'ite holy city of Qum and resume a life of teaching and prayer. It seems improbable that he would try to become a kind of Archbishop Makarios of Iran, directly holding the reins of power. Khomeini believes that Iran should become a parliamentary democracy, with several political parties. But he is unlikely to withdraw to shadows and silence until Iran adopts a new constitution and the threat of civil war is removed...
American experts on Iran tend to believe the Ayatullah's aides when they insist that he has no ambitions to head any new government. Expectations are that he will eventually return to his home in the holy city of Qum (pronounced, roughly, koom) and resume a life of prayer and learning. He may serve as an arbiter of last resort, leaving the details of government to professional politicians. The Shi'ite branch of Islam, to which most Iranians adhere, has no formal hierarchy. Five other Ayatullahs are deemed theoretically equal to Khomeini as spiritual leaders. They may urge...
...cause. Throughout the crisis, Khomeini issued daily Elamiehs (bulletins) from exile counseling his followers to share their grain, return to work in the oilfields, treat soldiers with kindness, and the like. These were recorded in Persian on a cassette, then played over the phone to a headquarters in Qum, reported TIME Correspondent Sandy Burton from Paris. That cassette was then transcribed by followers who mimeographed it and distributed it in the form of flyers to Shi'ites in that city. At the same time, the messages were played over telephone lines to some 9,000 mosques all over Iran...