Word: qum
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Nasrallah, 44, is used to being heard. Since assuming the group's leadership after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Sheik Abbas Musawi, in 1992, Nasrallah--a bearded, bespectacled Shi'ite cleric who trained in Najaf and Qum--has used Hizballah's resources to build a vast welfare network consisting of dozens of schools, 50 clinics and four hospitals as well as various businesses and farms that employ supporters...
...lifetime's knowledge of Islamic principles and law. Sistani's learning is universally recognized. According to his official biography, the child born into a pious, scholarly family in rugged northeastern Iran began learning the Koran at age 5. He absorbed the conservative traditions of the Islamic seminaries in Qum, where he arrived as a 19-year-old prodigy. Three years later, he left to study in the Iraqi city of Najaf, the prestigious 1,000-year-old home to some of Shi'ism's most prominent teachers of jurisprudence; he has lived there ever since. Najaf's schools were filled...
...student revolutionary during the Shah's reign, Kadivar enrolled in the Shi'ite seminary in the holy city of Qum after Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power, spending 17 years there as a student and teacher. To the dismay of hard-line clerics, his most important work presents a devastating critique of velayat-e faqih, the Shi'ite Muslim doctrine expounded by Khomeini that effectively grants the power of dictatorship to a top Shi'ite cleric. Kadivar argues that because the concept was conceived by clerics rather than by Allah, it cannot be considered sacred or infallible. And if clerics...
...Islamic revolution. "What the people wanted was something different," he says. "Who were [the mullahs] to destroy it?" Iran's clerical court recently threatened to defrock Kadivar if he persists in voicing such views. Although he is free to don civilian attire now that he has left the Qum seminary, he says he will keep wearing his clerical robes as a symbol of defiance. If his message spreads, he could be instrumental in showing people beyond Iran how they can be good Muslims and good democrats too. --By Scott MacLeod and Nahid Siamdoust/Tehran
...decision to speak out against the U.S. caucus plan was motivated not by political ambition but by his perception that the Governing Council was not defending the rights of Iraqis and by a desire to protect the interests of Iraqi Shi'ites. In an interview with TIME in Qum, Grand Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who has spent 15 years under house arrest for criticizing Iran's ruling mullahs for abuse of office, said that Sistani is acting for the good of Iraq. "If there should be a stable government, it is best that it is a government elected...