The pendulum had swung from nationalism, monarchism and Westernization to rigid Shia fundamentalism.

A major difference between Shia fundamentalism in Iran and main stream Islamic fundamentalism is that the former has nothing to do with Salafism.

Armstrong traces the development of Sunni fundamentalism under Sayyid Qutb and Shia fundamentalism under Ayatollah Khomeini.

Even within Islam, there is the tradition of sufi mysticism that strives against Shia fundamentalism's literalism, its dourness, and its obsession with the minutiae of daily life.

Turkey now finds itself, through its alliance with Iran and support for Hamas, rushing headlong into a series of conflicts – with Europe, the US, Israel, and moderate Arab regimes that have survived Iranian Shia fundamentalism but may now feel threatened by a neo-Ottoman Sunni foreign policy.

The rise of militant Islamist groups in Pakistan began in the early 1980s under the country’s then leader General Muhammad Zia-ul-Huq, largely in response to the growth of Shia fundamentalism in Iran and in a bid to support the Mujahideen who were fighting the Soviets in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Not only did this rob Shiite fundamentalism of its most devoted volunteers, but it left Iran with a birth deficit.

It is now largely up to the Kurds to keep Iraq's government and constitution from conceding too much to Shiite fundamentalism.

Iraq and Syria are buffers against Shiite fundamentalism, but they are bitter enemies of Israel.

But the Sunni middle class often seems more afraid of Shiite fundamentalism and Kurdish tribal bloodletting than of Saddam's authoritarianism.

Their answer: Sound out intermediaries to discuss with the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians ways to contain the spread of Iran's Shiite fundamentalism.

They said, for instance, that many Western analysts first viewed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as motivated by the desire to block the influence of Shiite fundamentalism.

He said the Sadaqia Madrasa, one of the largest Shiite religious schools in Herat, was at the center of an effort to spread Shiite fundamentalism.

Iranian Shiite fundamentalism combined with Persian arrogance vies with Saudi Arabia for influence in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

He said that American fears of Shiite fundamentalism are overblown and that the party supports the creation of a democracy in Iraq, not an Iranian-style theocracy.

Many of the Iraqi fighters are disenfranchised Sunni Arabs bitter at their ouster from power and fearful of the rise of Shiite fundamentalism backed by Iran.

Until two years ago, the Iranian Government actively encouraged Shiite fundamentalism in Soviet Azerbaijan and among the 50 million Muslims who live in the southern Soviet Union.

Since Shiite fundamentalism is itself a recent phenomenon, the early Iranian revolutionaries inevitably rebuilt the religious seminaries along lines suggested by the Iranian opposition’s most powerful pre-revolutionary discourse: communist ideology.

But in 1953, the CIA under Dwight D. Eisenhower helped oust the democratically elected prime minister and reinstate the Shah, arguably helping give rise to Shiite fundamentalism.

Pakistan envisioned itself as a bulwark of Sunni Islam against Iran's Shiite fundamentalism, India's policies in Kashmir and Soviet atheism to the north in Central Asia.

A former art critic, he became interested in the Islamic world after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and he intended to write about the rise of Shiite fundamentalism, said his widow, Lisa Ramaci.

It is flanked not only by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Shiite fundamentalism to the east but also by the strict Sunni Wahabi doctrine of Saudi Arabia to the west.

This ambitious history is highlighted by a journalistic account of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah and led to the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Shiite fundamentalism.

Even so, it is entirely possible to overestimate the power of these clerical calls, and indeed, the allure of Shiite fundamentalism, no matter how unsettling the images of bloody self-flagellation at the Karbala celebrations.

Unlike Iran, which is not an Arab country, many Arab nations of the Middle East are populated by Sunni Muslim majorities who have come to view Iranian Shiite fundamentalism as a threat.

Look, it's true that the French dropped Mag Bottle Seventy-four on Tehran because the Iranians were using the imprinter to forcibly convert Muslims and non-Muslims to their particular brand of Shiite fundamentalism.

There can be no farewell to arms while strong currents of Shiite fundamentalism seek to violently carve their channels across the Muslim world and while Palestinian nationalists fight to win a homeland against Israel's struggle for recognition and security.

Rather than ascribe to Shiite fundamentalism, as do members of the theocratic and judicial branches of Iran's government, Ahmadinejad, his chief of staff and close confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, and those who support them have been championing Iran's past.

Iranian Shiite fundamentalism is already creating unrest in the Moslem-inhabited Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, while Iran's assistance to the Afghan rebels is particularly galling to a Kremlin that is seeking desperately to extricate itself from the Afghan imbroglio.

Part of the answers to those questions may lie in Iran, the fount of Hezbollah's brand of Shiite fundamentalism and source of an estimated $2 billion in support since the early 1980's, and in Syria, the conduit through which the arms supplied by Iran have flowed.

Baalbek came to be a stronghold of Shiite fundamentalism and the probable hideout of several Iranian-linked groups that carried out hijackings, kidnappings of Westerners and suicide truck bombings, including that of the barracks of United States Marine peacekeeping troops and two American Embassy buildings.