Word: mullah
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his allies have often been called pragmatists and their opponents hard-liners, but the labels do not convey the multitude of factions vying for power. "Only personal interests and family interests are priorities-for all of them," says a longtime diplomat. Though himself a mullah, Rafsanjani would like to weaken the clergy's grip on Iran's domestic affairs. But he lost control when a conservative, hostile parliament was voted in three years ago. "Rafsanjani is Iran's Gorbachev -- he wants to, but he can't," says the diplomat...
...Rich Man" (with George Bush singing) are merely the beginning. Strauss and Newport steal songs from the thirties--"Forget Your Rubles, Come On Get Preppy," disco--"Keep Him Alive" (a prayer for the President), and even summer camp as a Palestinian delegate to the peace process sings "Hello, Mullah, hello Fatah, here I am at intifada...
Asked what he thinks about killing, Mohammad Anwar looks puzzled. "I was happy because I killed them," he says. During the attack, Mohammad Anwar's older brother and some other mujahedin seized four soldiers. They bound the prisoners' hands, blindfolded them and marched them to Dara Noor. After the mullah arrived, they lined up the captives and shot them. Mohammad Anwar and his friend watched. How did he feel about that? He lifts an eyebrow and this time answers deliberately, as if talking to a slow-witted child. "I was happy," he says...
...group is more delighted with the new religious liberty than the mullahs who nurtured the Islamic faith during decades of persecution. "They used to shoot us," says a mullah at Tashkent's Tokhta Baitvacha mosque, which was closed in 1937 on Stalin's orders and reopened a year ago. "Now they don't interfere with us. A lot of young people come here these days...
...Tashkent headquarters of the Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, a gaggle of Uzbek teenagers fidget through 2 p.m. prayers while their elders scowl at a visiting photographer. At an elegant medieval-era mosque just outside town, young construction volunteers stop for a farewell word from mullah Kasemi Bey after a Saturday morning of restoration work. Says Kasemi Bey: "The number of believers is growing. Everybody wants to go to Mecca...