Word: shiing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...founder, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Though situated on a desolate piece of desert convenient only if you're headed to the international airport, the enormous scaffolding-enclosed shrine, still under construction 20 years after the Supreme Leader's death, is an essential part of the pilgrimage for devout Iranian Shi'ites...
...hundreds of men with unkempt beards, ill-fitting pants and untucked white shirts - the trademark garb of the Basij paramilitary vigilantes - milled about in the sprawling parking lot, said to be able to fit 20,000 cars. Dozens of tour buses sat idle after bringing in crowds from nearby Shi'ite strongholds like Iraq, while the license plates of the mostly run-down, domestic-made Paykans in the lot indicated that many traveled from the far corners of this country: Kermanshah in the west, Shiraz in the south, Yazd in the southeast. (See pictures of the long legacy of Ayatullah...
Therein lies the predicament for the regime. It has cast the street demonstrations as a supposedly Western-led, secular velvet revolution. But Shi'ites, who are the overwhelming majority of Iranian Muslims, believe that only an Imam's surviving lineage can accurately interpret his ideology. So to have so many Khomeinis jump ship set off alarms for the ruling hard-liners...
...Islamic Republic has substituted raw political calculation for the legacy of its founder, it has not yet trickled down to the pious Shi'ites from the provinces who gather at his tomb. There, devotion and loyalty to the Imam still rings true. On a recent summer day, a group of women in head-to-toe chadors sat outside the main doors, chatting away and having a picnic. It was one of the few bright moments in a season of darkness...
...worst part of the scandal for Hizballah might come not in dollars and cents but in damage to its reputation for honesty, competence and integrity, which, given its status as the world's most formidable organization of guerrilla fighters, is what makes the Shi'ite political party popular not just in Lebanon but in the wider Arab world. Those traits were on display when Hizballah engineers and social-service workers fanned out immediately in the aftermath of the war with Israel in 2006 to assess damage and offer assistance to its supporters who had lost their homes and business. Months...