Word: mobbing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Khomeini's tirades spur outbreaks of mob hysteria?and bloodshed...
From the U.S. came a warning of military force, from Iran an appeal to mob violence. Such violence broke out from Turkey to India, most seriously in Pakistan, where the first American blood was shed. And by this time Iran's fire-eating Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had become so extreme, so demagogic, so streaked with irrationality that serious diplomats wondered how the breach could be repaired. "This is not a struggle between the United States and Iran," Khomeini declared. "It is a struggle between Islam and the infidels." He repeatedly threatened that the 49 American hostages held in the captured...
...Muslim fanaticism and anti-American violence that swept far beyond Iran. In Saudi Arabia, possessor of the world's greatest reserves of oil and American dollars, a band of extreme religious zealots seized the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest shrine in all Islam (see WORLD). In Pakistan, a mob enraged by radio reports claiming that the U.S. had inspired the attack on the Mecca mosque stormed and set fire to the U.S. embassy. They left the modernistic, 30-acre compound a gutted ruin. Two Americans were killed; 90 others were rescued after seven hours of horror (see following pages...
...marked the start of mass demonstrations that eventually brought down the Shah, and thus it has acquired a revolutionary tinge. Excited by that combination, roaring crowds numbering in the tens of thousands surrounded the embassy. Their frenzy was so great that even the youths occupying the embassy urged the mob through loudspeakers to calm down. Dozens of people fainted in the crush and were passed unconscious over the heads of the throng to waiting ambulances. A number of demonstrators wore the kafan, the Islamic burial shroud, to proclaim their willingness to become martyrs. One group carried a large cardboard effigy...
Only at night, with the embassy in flames, did the mob disperse, its passion spent. The toll of dead in the seven-hour rampage: one American Marine and an Army warrant officer, two Pakistani embassy clerks and two rioters...