Word: karbala
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OVER SPRING BREAK in London, a friend of mine met an Iraqi student (a Shi'ite from the holy city of Karbala) who described watching the secret police take his parents away in the middle of the night. They were kept imprisoned for years, during which he didn't know whether they were dead or alive...
...rulers of Islam. Persevering with his claim, Ali became Islam's leader in A.D. 656, only to be assassinated five years later. Hussein, Ali's son, eventually pressed his own claim to the leadership. But he and most of his family were killed in battle with rival forces at Karbala in Iraq. To the horror of all Islam, the Prophet's grandson was cruelly tortured before being beheaded...
...ites, who make up almost 60% of their country's population, have chosen to be Iraqis first and Shi'ites second. The ancient animosity between Arabs and Persians apparently transcends religious sympathies. Nonetheless, the Iraqis receive constant reminders of Iranian Shi'ite fervor. Tehran's major offensives are named Karbala, after the place where Hussein died, and captured Iranian soldiers proudly show off the "keys to Heaven" issued to them when they enlisted. The celestial keys: dog tags. Observes an Iraqi official: "The Iranians are still fighting the Battle of Hussein...
...addition, Saddam's aggressively secular, socialist regime has long been anathema to Khomeini's philosophy of government, which insists on the clergy's God-given right to rule. With its 55% Shi'ite majority and Shi'ite shrines at An Najaf and Karbala, Iraq should, in Khomeini's view, be the natural home of a sister Islamic republic...
...Iraq's internal affairs implied cutting links with the Shi'ites of Iraq, who represent half the country's population and have long had close ties to the Shi'ites of Iran, particularly since their most holy shrines are in Iraq at An Najaf and Karbala. Iran, on hearing the terms, turned them down out of hand...