A TURN IN TEHRAN

摘要

Leaning against the wall in ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's Tehran sitting room is a portrait of a young boy. A portrait of the Prophet Muhammad as a young boy, to be exact. How is it that this fire-tongued figure of radical Shi'ism, this thrower of fatwas, the face of political Islam, would permit something so sacrilegious as a portrait of the Prophet in his presence, when we all know that depicting the founder of Islam is a sin? The guard at the gate of Khomeini's house and museum in Tehran just shrugged. "I don't know. He just liked it."