Word: clericalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Kandahar, a dusty, ramshackle place swirling with intrigue and all manner of scheming, a great Afghan mystery envelops us all - where is Mullah Omar? To foreign eyes the Muslim cleric who carried the Taliban from this, their spiritual home, to rule the country vanished with the fall of his regime five weeks ago. There is no sign, no trace. He is invisible to our technology...
...year-old boy accused of killing American Sergeant Nathan Roy Chapman last week when it emerged Monday that the boy had escaped. The previous week, Afghan militiamen had claimed to be closing in on fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar in Helmand province, but then the one-eyed cleric simply vanished. A month earlier at Tora Bora, local fighters claimed to have surrounded Osama bin Laden and some 2,000 of his henchmen in the cave complex, but by the time the last grotto fell, some 1,800 of those fighters - and bin Laden himself - were nowhere to be found...
...shocking circumstances surrounding the death of Ayatullah Mohammed Hosseini Shirazi, however, make it clear that Iran's hard-liners still have the upper hand--and are as repressive as ever. Shirazi, 75, had been under house arrest for years for such crimes as questioning the dogma that one cleric should hold supreme power--and for doubting Ayatullah Ali Khamenei's qualifications for that job. Shirazi's followers have fared even worse, frequently being tossed into prison...
...regaled bin Laden with dreams and prophesies presaging such an act and said it most certainly had Allah's blessing. But there is no such certainty about the identity of bin Laden's mysterious guest. He was first identified by Saudi officials as Sheik al-Ghamdi, a militant Saudi cleric and former professor of Islamic theology known for making firebrand anti-Western speeches. Later, senior Saudi officials said the guest was Khaled al-Harbi, a legless veteran of combat in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, according to the New York Times and U.S. officials. In the video, the shadowy guest relays...
...Iran routinely harasses political dissidents while they're alive, but until now has refrained from punishing them posthumously. Followers of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hosseini Shirazi - who died of a stroke last week in the holy city of Qom - have been arrested and imprisoned over the years for supporting the cleric's opposition to the Islamic regime. With Shirazi's death, the saga of state intimidation and years of house arrest seemed over. But special police in camouflage gear stormed the funeral procession, beat pall-bearers and stole the Ayatollah's corpse, which fell from its coffin twice during the scuffle...