Word: pious
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Westernized intellectuals were infuriated by rampant corruption and repression; workers and peasants by the selective prosperity that raised glittering apartments for the rich while the poor remained in mud hovels; bazaar merchants by the Shah-supported businessmen who monopolized bank credits, supply contracts and imports; the clergy and their pious Muslim followers by the gambling casinos, bars and discothéques that seemed the most visible result of Westernization. (One of the Shah's last prime ministers also stopped annual government subsidies to the mullahs.) Almost everybody hated the police terror and sneered in private at the Shah's Ozymandian megalomania...
Arogant and pious. Stubborn and vengeful. Humorless and inflexible. Ascetic and power hungry. These are some of the adjectives that experts on Iran use to describe the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini...