On October 20, 4 students faced the death penalty on...

On October 20, 4 students faced the death penalty on charges of insulting the Twelfth Imam, one of the holiest Shiite figures in Islam, by publishing a satirical play in The Wave, an obscure university magazine with about 150 readers. The case has sparked a national scandal that focuses on the dilemma dividing the Islamic Republic: whether Iran should adopt a modern interpretation of religion, as advocated by reformers, or a monolithic one favored by hard-liners. The controversy inspired the first personal attack on President Mohammad Khatami from hard-liners, who believe his reformist policies are trampling on Islamic sanctities. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stepped in to defuse the crisis in a rare public defense of Mr. Khatami during a sermon earlier in October. A representative from Ayatollah Khamenei's office appeared in the courtroom on the fifteenth, and pleaded for compassion for the students, signaling the leader's desire, which he implied in the sermon, that the students should be spared the death penalty. But hard-liners have taken a tougher stand. One conservative cleric has compared the students to the British author Salman Rushdie, and said that they, like Mr. Rushdie, should be executed. The Rushdie case continues to occupy the nation, even though the Iranian Government has stated officially that it has no intention of carrying out the fatwa, issued by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. The outcome of the trial of the 4 students is not yet known.