| The chief ayatollah of the Shiite Muslims in Iraq says he wants direct democratic elections to take place. |
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| The ayatollah wields considerable influence among Shiites, who make up more than 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people. |
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| Eventually, a new dictator, perhaps a Shiite ayatollah, takes control and forms a passionately anti-American government. |
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| At the same time a stream of visitors from Iran, including many clerics, are received by the ayatollah in his mud-brick home in downtown Najaf each day. |
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| The ayatollah warned Iran would be pitiless towards rabble-rousers. |
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| The Supreme Leader of Iran, ayatollah Ali Khamenei is, well, the supreme leader. |
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| But John is sure that he can nurture ayatollah to bring out the best in him, if only Tzipi and Saeb will do their best for Salaam. |
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| Later that day, the 75-year-old ayatollah delivered his first major speech of the year, which usually has a great political significance. |
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| I have, in fact, always called you the nuclear ayatollah, and I think that this evening's photograph is likely to be almost perfect. |
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| Being an ayatollah, I can modestly say that I am something of an expert in textual exegesis. |
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| The multiple-stabbing of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, the respected son of an ayatollah who was flown from London to Iraq in a CIA plane, was a lesson to would-be collaborators. |
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| Already in the womb, little ayatollah is displaying worrisome signs. |
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| The European Union further expresses its concern at the plight of the Iranian Shiite ayatollah Seyed Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi, who has been imprisoned for his religious activities along with several of his followers. |
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| The message, targeting Mr. Jalili and his allies, was understood to be that the Qom ayatollah elite owns the revolution, especially through the blood spilt in the war with Iraq. |
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| Its rabbis were political kingmakers. Mr Yosef, who has run the show for a generation, has been likened to an ayatollah, steeped as he was in the fervid atmosphere of Baghdad and Cairo where he grew up. |
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| The ayatollah has, indeed, supported the president at several critical junctures, helping him to expose violence-mongers in the secret service and, more recently, in the police. |
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| But the 75-year-old ayatollah has become so powerful that the council's supervisory role has diminished to a symbolic one despite members still being elected in public votes. |
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| Ayatollah Khamenei was elevated from the middle clerical rank, hojatolislam, to ayatollah overnight in what was essentially a political rather than a religious decision. |
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| The Iraqi Shias have produced a unity ticket for the elections under the direction of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Iraqi Shia cleric. |
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| The most likely explanation is that the militias' leadership is ordering this restraint, obeying the instructions of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. |
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| We wait like small children to see if an aging Ayatollah will decide to evict us by force or moral suasion. |
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| This was the model used by Ayatollah Khomeini, who spearheaded the 1979 revolution from suburban Paris. |
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| It's for the crime of apostasy that Ayatollah Khomenei sent death squads for Salman Rushdie. |
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| For Ayatollah Khamenei, China is a model to avoid and its journey from defiance to pragmatism a path to resist. |
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| Riyadh's importance was vastly enhanced in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the Shah of Iran, theretofore Washington's chief ally in the Persian Gulf. |
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| And the Ayatollah Sistani already gave a religious order that it is haram to do anything to those Ba'athists unless it is through the courts in Iraq. |
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| The Basij militia founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in November 1980 is composed of 10,000 regular soldiers. |
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| Moreover, and as maintained by Ayatollah Khamenei, all Muslims should stay vigilant against the corruptive incitements of foreign defeatists. |
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| The Ayatollah Khomeini famously called the United States the great satan. |
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| But don't expect some rabble-rousing sectarian demagoguery from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. |
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| Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran called on Muslims to learn Esperanto and praised its use as a medium for better understanding among peoples of different religious backgrounds. |
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| The Shah was ousted and the Ayatollah Khomeini and his band of radical mullahs replaced the Pahlavis and adopted a violent anti-American and anti-Israeli agenda. |
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| The Ayatollah Khomeini poured gasoline on the fire with his comments on the mosque seizure, which were broadcast by Iranian radio the day after the attack. |
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| Egypt and Iran have been at odds ever since the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi was ousted from power by the late Ayatollah Khomeini and took refuge in Egypt. |
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| Unfortunately, that might not stop a theocratically governed Iran with an apocalyptic, millenarian president and supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. |
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| Amoli Larijani in a letter addressed to Ayatollah Khamenei said that the unifying comments of his eminence have roots in pure fountain of Vicegerency. |
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