Word: ruhollah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fashion himself as the defender of Iraqi rights while exercising influence over the future shape of the country. He was born in Mashhad, Iran, to a prominent family of Islamic scholars; indeed, his story has parallels to that of another Iranian cleric from Najaf who rose to power--Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. But Sistani is no Khomeini. He has long preached that the Shi'ite clergy stay out of politics to avoid being sullied by deals and compromise. His vision is of a Shi'ite orthodoxy that exercises influence over Shi'ite lives--much as the Vatican does over Catholic ones...
...that is not Muqtada al-Sadr's way. He shares with the late Iranian revolutionary Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini a belief in rule by the clergy in a strict theocratic state. Al-Sadr's strategy, it now appears, is to engage coalition forces in a deadly confrontation, in the belief that Iraqi Shi'ites will support him in a direct showdown with the U.S. His rabid anti-Americanism, which previously failed to connect with the majority of Shi'ites, now strikes a chord. A year after the war began, their tolerance is exhausted. The lower rungs of society...
Khamenei, who smiles about as often as did his dour predecessor, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, had appealed for a big turnout. It may be days before anyone knows the exact tallies from elections that Khamenei, despite his upbeat words, knows alienated many Iranians, young and old. But whatever the precise totals, the results are likely to hand Khamenei's conservative political allies a healthy majority in the 290-seat Majlis, dealing a devastating blow to reformists who swept into the assembly four years ago trumpeting an era of democratic change...
...tumult in Tehran's streets suggests that the country's youth will not be quieted for long. More than 60% of Iran's 70 million people are under the age of 30. The oldest were just starting school when the Shah was toppled by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. Their fathers and uncles were sacrificed to Iraqi missiles and mines in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which claimed more than 300,000 Iranian lives. They have inherited bitter memories and unrelenting strictures, and now the boys want girlfriends with whom they can hold hands and socialize freely...
...perspective of nearly 2 1/2 decades, the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran and its monumental impact across the Islamic world may appear to have been inevitable. It seemed like anything but certain destiny, however, to those of us on board the Air France 747 taking Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini from Paris to Tehran that morning in 1979. The exiled Shah's Prime Minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, still controlled the country and commanded the armed forces, and our immediate concern was whether the air force might decide that the best way to solve the problem of what to do with...