Word: shied
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...allies. The rulers of Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter of all, are reported to be frightened; a new set of security regulations is in force throughout the country. The governments of the tiny states of the Persian Gulf are also worried, about both their Shi'ite and Palestinian populations and about the wave of Islamic fundamentalism and unrest that seems to be spreading through the Middle East. They are trying desperately to bend with the wind. Bahrain, long known for its easygoing Western ways-it is one of the few countries in the area where liquor is sold...
...Mujahedin is the more moderate of the two parties. It practices the same religion as Khomeini, but it differs in wanting to establish a classless society, or "pure Shi'ism." The party boycotted the referendum on the theocratic constitution, and it refused to surrender the arsenal it had built up during its long struggle against the Shah. Persecuted by Khomeini forces, the Mujahedin nevertheless feel they are spiritually akin. Says a party leader: "The struggle is between two kinds of Islam, two kinds of Shi'ism, not them...
...holy city of Qum, which is the home of most Shi'ite leaders, Sharietmadari met repeatedly with Khomeini and grew uncharacteristically angry. The normally meek ayatullah warned that unless the Tehran government granted more self-rule to the Azerbaijanis, "dis-turbances will continue, tensions will increase, people will start to kill each other, and civil war will take place." He gave Khomeini an uncommonly aggressive lecture about insisting that the West was responsible for the uprising. Said Sharietmadari: "Everything that happens in this country should not be blamed on 'international Zionism and imperialism.' The legitimate demands...
...developing a modern political system, writes the Shah, his father "removed from the clergy part of the privileges they had previously enjoyed. Consequently, one section of the Shi'ite clergy responded by branding all temporal power as necessarily a form of usurpation." But the Shah insists that he dealt relatively mildly with his opponents: "I am told today that I should have applied martial law more forcefully. This would have cost my country less dear than the bloody anarchy now established there. But a sovereign cannot save his throne by spilling the blood of his fellow countrymen...
Iran embodies both the essence of the Islamic complaint against the West and unique historical grievances of its own. By race (Aryan), language (Persian), religion (Shi'ite Muslim) and historical tradition (ancient Persia was conquered by Muslims in the 8th century), Iran is different from the rest of Middle Eastern Islam. It was never colonized, in the usual sense of the word, by the West. And yet the penetration of Western ideas was deeper in Iran than in some other parts of the Middle East and came to be seen in a considerably more sinister light...