Holy Terror

Khomeini sends forth a zealot

He gained fame in his homeland, and infamy in the U.S., as the clerical adviser of the militants who held 52 American hostages for 14 months in Iran. Now Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Mousavi Khoeyniha, 44, has been given another mandate: to export religious revolution to Saudi Arabia.

Khomeini has appointed Khoeyniha to direct Iran's mass hadj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, one of Islam's holiest rituals. His instructions: to foment agitation among the 2 million or so Muslims who will be flocking to Mecca in September. Khoeyniha will thus be Khomeini's agent to help promote the religious insurrection that the Ayatullah has vowed he will bring to Saudi Arabia and the other oil-rich gulf states. TIME has learned that Khomeini told Khoeyniha not to be intimidated by the more moderate clergymen among the estimated 100,000 Iranian pilgrims. "Disobedience to you," asserted Khomeini, "is disobedience to me." Khomeini exhorted Khoeyniha to renew the power of Islam, "which profiteers and thinkers of warped thoughts have consigned to oblivion."

The conservative Saudi leadership, already wary of unrest among the country's Shi'ite minority, fears the trouble Khoeyniha will bring in his wake from Iran, where the Shi'ites are dominant. Already the Iranian embassy in Saudi Arabia has secretly been printing and stockpiling millions of propaganda tracts. Their message: "reactionary" regimes like Saudi Arabia are hand-in-glove with the enemies of Islam, and Muslims everywhere must unite and overthrow their "lackey governments." As a security measure, the Saudis are banning Iranian pilgrims from visiting Shi'ites in the east on their way to Mecca. Khomeini's strategy is to pack the ranks of pilgrims with Muslim zealots, known as Hezbollahis (members of God's party), as he attempts to stir up trouble in Saudi Arabia.

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