Word: ites
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...numbering more than 100,000, was a colorful, sometimes incongruous cross section of Iranian society: dissident students in jeans; women shrouded in the black chador, the traditional head-to-foot veil; peasants and merchants; and most important the bearded, black-robed Muslim mullahs, the religious leaders of the Shi'ite branch of Islam, which commands the allegiance of 93% of Iran's 34.4 million people...
...proud Shah, as for his distressed people, it was a sorry week, yet one that had been a long time coming. For months the Shah's opposition had been growing more demonstrative, especially the Shi'ite mullahs and their followers. Three weeks ago, the militance took on a mad and sinister cast: terrorists set fire to a movie house in Abadan, killing 377 people. In an attempt to placate the religious conservatives, the Shah two weeks, earlier had installed Sharif-Emami as Premier, largely because he was respected by Iran's moderate Muslim clergy. Sharif-Emami closed gambling casinos...
Thus the Shi'ite leaders felt threatened when the Shah set out to create a Western-style nation in the 20th century mold. He called his campaign the White (for bloodless) Revolution. Later it was renamed the Shah-People's Revolution, but changing the name did not prevent the inevitable clash of cultures...
...brought the Shah to the brink of disaster. As frustrations mounted over the months, Iranians turned to their Islamic religious leaders?the mullahs?who, as it happens, have deep grievances of their own. For centuries, the daily lives of the Persians were guided by conservative mullahs of the Shi'ite sect, whose influence embraced not only the country's spiritual life but also its secular culture and economic institutions...
...defiance of the mullahs, the Shah ordered widespread land reforms, divesting the Shi'ite clergy of their vast holdings. The Shah scheduled a referendum on land reform and won his way by a wide margin. He decreed new privileges for women, including the right to vote and to attend institutions of higher learning. In June 1963 the mullahs, having failed to block the Shah's reforms, called their people into the streets. Demonstrations turned into riots, and the Shah sent in his troops. When the rioting stopped several days later, 200 people were dead, and the leader of the mullah...