Word: sunni
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...bloody reminder of the dominant presence in southern Lebanon of the Shi'ites, the Muslims who now make up 40% of the country's population of 3 million. Long an impoverished rural people, Shi'ite followers in Iran and the Arab world split from the dominant Sunni Muslims over doctrinal issues concerning the descendants of the prophet Muhammad. In recent years the Shi'ites have waged a successful struggle for political equality and economic well-being. With success has come unprecedented power, and power has created a cauldron of shifting alliances and abrupt betrayals within their own ranks...
...later, Berri, who is also Lebanon's Minister of Justice, organized his own show of "justice," though it bore no direct relation to either of last week's explosions. Amal militiamen bound and blindfolded Mohieddin Saleh, 22, a Sunni Muslim they charged with trying to set off a car bomb three months earlier, then took him to a playground near the Rawdat Shahidain Cemetery. As a crowd of 1,000 looked on, Amal executioners stepped up to the prostrate Saleh and pumped seven machine-gun rounds into his face and body. The grisly execution tragically bore out the lament...
...Islamic Liberation Organization, a group previously unknown, told Western news agencies that they were to blame. Within hours, Polaroid photos of the four Soviets, guns held to their heads, were delivered to news organizations. The kidnapers demanded an immediate end to the fighting in Tripoli between Tawheed, a Sunni Muslim Fundamentalist group, and several Syrian-supported militias. The terrorists seemed to be targeting the Soviet Union because it supports Syria with large amounts of military...
...East Beirut, where a single Christian militia maintains a surprising degree of control, life seems relatively calm. But in Muslim-controlled West Beirut -- across the barricaded "green line," a swath of no-man's-land that divides the city between east and west -- gunmen from various Shi'ite and Sunni factions rule the streets. Neighborhoods in this area, where the American hostages are presumably being held, often change hands from week to week in the endless fighting among factions...
Accordingly, Berri led Amal in armed clashes against Israelis, Maronite Christians, Palestinians, Sunni Muslims and former allies, the Druze. "Berri the moderate? That's absurd!" scoffs Joyce Starr, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. Agrees a U.S. Government source who has dealt with Berri: "He may be in the center but only because the center moved. He's not an extremist, but he's shown that he's quite willing to escalate his language -- and his actions -- to retain his position of authority in the Shia community." Still, there...