Word: velayat
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...nerve Eshkevari touches is velayat-e faqih, Khomeini's concept that gives the Muslim clergy, in particular its most revered scholar, absolute, God-given authority to govern Iran. Considering that legacy, political reformers avoid challenging it directly. But dissident clerics began questioning the dogma after Khomeini's death, an action that put some 500 mullahs in prison or under house arrest, including the most senior critic, Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazari, once Khomeini's designated successor. Conservatives are worried that democracy will disembowel velayat-e faqih--and the clerical establishment along with it. "If this debate is not resolved," warns Eshkevari...
...Minister of the Interior for permitting student demonstrations. Since then, his main vehicle of dissent has been the national daily Khordad. The newspaper has published defiant antiregime opinions by prominent clerics, notably Grand Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who has been under house arrest since 1997 for questioning velayat-e-faqih, the absolute authority of the clergy. In an explosive article, a young cleric, Mohsen Kadivar, even criticized the royalist tendencies of the clerics and their treatment of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei as a shah. Hard-liners feel particularly threatened, explains newspaper commentator Akbar Gangi, because the reformers have impeccable...
Khomeini's actual role is much less easy to define, especially in a quick first reference at the top of a news story. With the technical title of "velayat-i faqih," or guardian of the faithful--written into the country's constitution after much debate in 1979--a position which allows him wide-ranging power to approve laws and dismiss presidents and such...
...personally by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Despite his advanced age (82) and frail health, the religious leader has relinquished none of the levers of power that he grasped upon his triumphal return to Tehran 3½ years ago. Under Iran's Islamic Republican constitution, Khomeini's role as Velayat-e-Faqih, or religious guardian, gives him more power than either President Seyed Ali Khamene'i or Prime Minister...
...recent weeks a number of right-wing clergymen have agitated publicly for a share of political power, now monopolized by the ruling, Khomeini-backed Islamic Republic Party (I.R.P.). One source of their discontent: Khomeini's announcement on Oct. 12 that he was delegating some functions of the cherished Velayat-e-Faqih (Supreme Theologian's Mandate)* to the Majlis (parliament...