Word: shying
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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...
...businesses went bankrupt, ostensibly from the effects of the global financial crisis. But rumors swirled in the press of a pyramid scheme of more than $1 billion, and the local media dubbed Ezzeddine the Lebanese Bernie Madoff. Last weekend the Lebanese government charged him with fraud. All across the Shi'ite-populated regions of Lebanon, thousands of small investors - many of whom bundled small sums of money with their neighbors to give to Ezzeddine - feel betrayed by both the man and the organization. "I inherited $100,000 from my father to continue my studies. I invested them with Ezzeddine...
...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...