Word: sunni
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...many as 20 languages, not counting the dialects of remote tribes. The 4 million Kurds, superb guerrilla fighters who live in the western mountains, have at times dreamed of an independent Kurdistan, and today have set up what amounts to an autonomous region. The Baluchis, a nomadic tribe of Sunni Muslims, boycotted the referendum on the Iranian constitution, which they viewed as an attempt to impose Shi'ism on them. The 13 million Azerbaijanis, a Turkic people, also boycotted the constitutional referendum and in recent weeks have come close to an open revolt that could tear Iran apart...
...ites who had been influenced by Khomeini's recent calls for a general uprising by Muslim fundamentalists. Others speculated that the terrorists were members of an extreme Mahdist sect aligned with the Shi'ites. Still others said they were not Shi'ites at all but fanatical Sunni purists known as Wahhabis. At week's end, with the Riyadh regime saying nothing publicly, the best guess of Western intelligence experts was that the attackers were members of the 'Utaibah tribe, a migratory Sunni group that still wanders with its herds of goats and sheep between Mecca...
...late Kurdish leader General Mulla Mustafa Barzani once called the Kurds "the orphans of the universe," because they have never had a national homeland of their own. A handsome, high-spirited people, with dark, flashing eyes and chiseled features, they belong to the Sunni sect of Islam whereas most Iranians are Shi'ite Muslims. The trials of farming craggy mountainsides, where the summer temperatures soar above 100° and winter blizzards last for weeks at a time, have made the Kurds tough and independent...
About the time of his marriage, Khomeini made the devout Muslim's obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca. On his way back from Islam's holiest city, he got into a squabble with a group of Sunni Muslims in a Damascus mosque. In keeping with his own Shi'a tradition, Khomeini had placed a handful of earth on his prayer rug, and was preparing to put his forehead upon it. The Sunnis angrily objected to this practice, Khomeini deftly answered that it was wrong to place one's forehead directly on a rug, that one should be more...
Perhaps the most dangerous development has been growing unrest in the military, still Assad's power base. Alawites hold senior positions throughout the armed forces, and Assad himself is commander in chief of the air force, but most of the enlisted men are Sunni Muslims who increasingly resent domination by their officers. Israeli intelligence experts speculate that a revolutionary mood may have swept through Syrian armor and infantry units, touching off fears of a coup. After the execution of the 15 brotherhood members, all of whom were Sunni Muslims, Rifaat's tank units rolled into Damascus and took...