safawi

Sadr, who stayed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein despite the attacks on his family, is also happy to play on widespread doubts about the bona fides of his Shiite rivals, many of whom sought refuge in Iran and are accordingly derided as safawi (after the Iranian Shah Ismail al-Safawi, who forcibly converted Sunnis in what is now Iraq to his own Shia faith in the early sixteenth century).

What About the Iraqis? Caryl, Christian 2007