Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...when the members of Iraq's new government were sworn in, Masar Sarhan al-Rubaiyi, 24, a pharmacy undergraduate at the University of Baghdad, decided to throw a party. As a supporter of a Shi'ite political party, al-Rubaiyi was celebrating the ascent of the country's Shi'ite majority after decades of repression under Saddam Hussein. But the revelry turned sour after officials at the college of pharmacy asked al-Rubaiyi and his friends to break up the event, saying it violated a university policy banning sectarian gatherings on campus. The students refused the request, and al-Rubaiyi...
...what happened next that has put the school on edge-and induced worries that al-Rubaiyi's death could spark a wider, bloodier conflagration. In the aftermath of the killing, mobs of Shi'ite students rioted at the college of pharmacy, blaming al-Hiti and his bodyguard-both of them Sunnis-for al-Rubaiyi's murder and vowing revenge. Al-Hiti and his bodyguard deny having anything to do with the murder. As the violence spread to a cluster of adjacent colleges, Sunni faculty members had to be evacuated by security guards, colleagues and students. When the rioters showed...
...millions of Iraqis, it's a familiar concern. The country has been facing its most deadly spasm of violence in a year: last month alone, attacks killed more than 600 Iraqis, many of them Shi'ites targeted by Sunni jihadis bent on sowing civil war. The country's universities have long served as the bulwark of Iraq's secular society, refuges from the sectarian strife that threatens to rip the country apart. But now violence has come to the campuses. A rocket attack on an engineering college in the heart of Baghdad two weeks ago killed two students and injured...
...been made even more perilous by the venom directed at faculty members by students themselves. Across the country, Shi'ite students have demanded the ouster of Sunni teachers, especially those who were senior members of the Baath Party during Saddam's rule. Many professors protest that they were forced to join the party, but some students suspect they remain loyal to Saddam and favor like-minded pupils. "There are still professors here who openly praise the previous regime and encourage [Sunni] students to sing songs about Saddam," says Haider, a Shi'ite pharmacy student at the University of Baghdad. "Such...
...week earlier, 58 clerics in Lahore had signed a fatwa condemning suicide bombings against Muslims or in places of worship. But many conservative clerics declined to endorse the decree, and hard-line orthodox Sunni militants, whom authorities suspect are behind Friday's bombing, do not consider Pakistan's many Shi'ites, Sufis and moderate Sunnis "real" Muslims at all. "There is no place in Islam for such acts," insists Mufti Munibur Rehman, who signed the fatwa. Sadly, there seems to be a place for them in Pakistan...