Word: shi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Central Asian Muslims, including the ethnically Persian peoples of Tajikistan, follow the Sunni Islam observed in Saudi Arabia and most of the Muslim world. A true religious revival in Central Asia would probably produce an Islamic state more like Pakistan than Iran, which holds to the more extreme fundamentalist Shi'ite dogma...
Such theological distinctions are lost, however, on a younger generation of radicals, who accuse the official Islamic establishment of having collaborated with a godless Soviet regime. "It doesn't matter that they are Shi'ite over there and we are Sunni," argues a militant in the Uzbek city of Namangan. "The Ayatullah made Iran strong and glorious, while in Sunni Turkey they have weakened Islam...
...Argentina, was destroyed by a 220-lb. car bomb. The ferocious blast killed at least 28 people and injured 235. Lebanon's Islamic Jihad terrorist group took responsibility, then later denied it. In the first message, the group said it was avenging Israel's Feb. 16 assassination of the Shi'ite fundamentalist leader Sheik Abbas Musawi, his family and bodyguards. Israel, feeling all the more victimized as a result of ! the bombing, was quick to swear vengeance of its own. "Those who carried out the murder and those who sent them can expect painful punishment," said Israeli Foreign Minister David...
...political planning for the war's aftermath was laid bare. Concerned that a weakened Iraq might leave a vacuum for Iranian power to fill and prompt Turkish Kurds to join their Iraqi compatriots in a breakaway country, Washington stood back while Saddam turned his guns against Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites. Comments an Administration official: "When Bush and Baker confront the breakup of a nation-state, whether it's Iraq, Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, they instinctively reach for an older, more traditional kind of world...
Although the assassination was planned for months, the timing proved especially appealing. The raid on the Israeli army camp two days earlier was carried out most probably by Palestinians, not Lebanese Shi'ites, but it provided the guise of a provocation. The easy infiltration of the army camp humiliated the military and spurred it to demonstrate its competence. Since the U.S. hostages once held by Hizballah were free, there was little concern about a serious outcry from Washington. (Beyond deploring the "rising cycle of violence," the U.S. State Department warned of the increased danger of terrorist attacks against Americans...