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Two major social revolutions during the twentieth century significantly changed the political fabric of Iranian society. Both were public uprisings against dictatorship and censorship, but each failed to establish a democratic system. The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 was a secular movement. It marginalized the Islamic clergy (known as ) forcing them to subsist on their own. The clergy became independent of the state but remained influential in the social and political life of the people. The 1979 revolution, on the other hand, empowered the clergy by legitimizing their control over all social and political institutions.