Word: clerical
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...Thugs is an inadequate word for the Shi'ite militiamen of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who have been battling the U.S. Thugs are what police deal with on city streets. But U.S. troops in Iraq aren't getting rolled for their wallets. Fighters using rocket-propelled grenades and firing at Apache helicopters are more than common thugs. These people are guerrillas, soldiers, insurgents, rebels or terrorists. Calling them thugs only downplays the difficulties in Iraq. Once President George W. Bush and the American people realize we're not dealing with thugs, then maybe we can come up with the number...
...Americans' hesitation: the prospect of a full assault on the city was having repercussions across the country, where moderate Iraqis were watching Arab TV stations that claimed there had already been hundreds of civilian casualties in Fallujah. At Friday prayers in Baghdad, at least one prominent Sunni cleric called for an uprising in the Sunni areas if Fallujah was attacked...
...City, he knew he wouldn't have much company. The executive officer of the 306th Battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), Raied and other battalion members had been warned by locals not to report for duty after fighting broke out between militants loyal to the Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and U.S. forces. Raied, who like his comrades asked to be identified only by his first name, estimates that only a third of his battalion was willing to brave their neighbors' threats. He was one. But when he got to Camp Eagle, Iraqi security guards manning...
...repressive Islamic Republic of Iran, a cleric isn't a very popular thing to be nowadays. Mohsen Kadivar is a celebrated exception. A theorist behind Iran's struggling democracy movement, the modest mullah packs lecture halls like a pop star and attracts readers like a pulp-fiction author. Students in his graduate philosophy classes at Tarbiat Modarres University in Tehran hang on his every utterance. Kadivar, 44, has found academic stardom a dangerous occupation in Iran--in 1999 he was jailed for 18 months for his ideas. But his scholarly perseverance has led to breakthroughs in one of the great...
...student revolutionary during the Shah's reign, Kadivar enrolled in the Shi'ite seminary in the holy city of Qum after Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power, spending 17 years there as a student and teacher. To the dismay of hard-line clerics, his most important work presents a devastating critique of velayat-e faqih, the Shi'ite Muslim doctrine expounded by Khomeini that effectively grants the power of dictatorship to a top Shi'ite cleric. Kadivar argues that because the concept was conceived by clerics rather than by Allah, it cannot be considered sacred or infallible. And if clerics...