Word: muslims
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Often as not, those who cover world news have to scramble for a train or a plane when a big story breaks. But last week when the smoldering dispute between the Shah of Iran and his conservative Muslim foes erupted into a major international crisis, TIME happened to have the right men at the right place at just the right time...
...found no shortage of political leaders to interview in neighboring Pakistan; they were alarmed by the plight of the beleaguered Shah and the possibility of Soviet intervention. Brelis, meanwhile, went off to the Iranian city of Qum, seat of the restless Shi'ite sect, for talks with rebelling Muslim leaders...
...outlawed Communist party. The crowd, at times 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...
Sharif-Emami proceeded to do just that. Within 48 hours his government declared that the Shah's recently restored imperial calendar would be scrapped and replaced by the old Islamic calendar that the Muslim religious leaders had been demanding.* The government further announced that the country's eight big gambling casinos, including the four owned by the Shah's charitable Pahlavi Foundation, would be shut down. The post of Minister of State for Women's Affairs was abolished to appease the mullahs, who claimed that liberalization policies in women's rights were undermining the sanctity...
...educated elite were predictably appalled at the latest turn of events. "The Shah's concessions will only make the opposition demand more," complained one Iranian businessman. "Mark my words: we are headed for civil war." Fortunately it was much too early to tell how the Shi'ite Muslim majority would react to the Shah's about-face...