Word: cleric
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Imam Musa Sadr, a charismatic Iranian cleric, led the political mobilization of the Shi'ite community in the 1960s and 1970s, giving it a voice for the first time through his Amal (Arabic for "hope") movement. Hizballah was born with Iranian assistance in the early 1980s, to resist Israel's occupation of Lebanon. And by the 1990s, the dynamism of Hizballah and the demographic advantage of the Shi'ites had begun to eat away at the historical Sunni dominance of Lebanon's Muslim communities...
...What's certain, however, is that this government will not survive," the white-turbaned cleric says...
Distinguishing Iraqis from Iranians can be hard. Iraq's most revered cleric, Grand Ayatullah Husaini Sistani, speaks Arabic with a thick Persian accent. (Sistan-Baluchestan is the name of a province in southeastern Iran.) Meanwhile, across the border, Iran's top judge, Ayatullah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, struggles with Persian, the residue of an Iraqi birth. Theological cross-pollination and political exile have created deep ties between the two Shi'ite communities--and that's exactly what the U.S. is afraid of. In his speech last week announcing plans to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, President Bush...
...what happened? For the first time since the war began, U.S. forces had locked down the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City, haven to the militias and death squads loyal to rebel Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Looking for a missing U.S. soldier, the Americans cordoned off much of Sadr City, preventing hundreds of killers from slipping out. On Oct. 24, the daily murder rate fell roughly 50%. It stayed down for more than a week, until Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki demanded that the U.S. end the blockade around Sadr City. After the U.S. pulled...
...gallows as it is for the gruesome climax. As the noose was tied around Saddam’s neck, the Iraqi judge and prosecutor, present to ensure order, lost control. The guards began chanting “Moktada,” referring to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric responsible for inciting much of Iraq’s sectarian violence. The guards then proceeded to dance around Saddam’s dead body and gleefully yell “to hell,” dispelling any notion of an “Iraq for all Iraqis” grounded...