They shared the goal of ending royal corruption and ending dominance by foreign powers. These resulted in the Shah accepting a suggestion to create a Majles (National Consultative Assembly) in October 1906, by which the monarch's power was curtailed as he granted a constitution and parliament to the people. King Mozaffar ad-Din Shah signed the 1906 constitution shortly before his death. The members of newly formed parliament stayed constantly in touch with Akhund Khurasani and whenever legislative bills were discussed, he was telegraphed the details for a juristic opinion. In a letter dated June 3, 1907, the parliament told Akhund about a group of anti-constitutionalists who were trying to undermine legitimacy of democracy in the name of religious law. The trio replied: The Nuri affair Meanwhile, the new Shah had understood that he could not roll back the constitutional democracy by royalist ideology, and therefore he decided to use the religion card. The parliament came under attack from imperial court's cleric, Shaykh Fazlullah Nuri and other anti-democracy clerics. Nuri was a rich and high-ranking Qajar court official responsible for conducting marriages and contracts. He also handled wills of wealthy men and collected religious funds. Nuri was opposed to the very foundations of the institution of parliament. He led a large group of followers and began a round-the-clock sit-in in the Shah Abdul Azim shrine on June 21, 1907 which lasted till September 16, 1907. He generalized the idea of religion as a complete code of social life to push for his own agenda. He believed democracy will allow for “teaching of chemistry, physics and foreign languages”, that would result in spread of Atheism. He bought a printing press and launched a newspaper of his own for propaganda purposes, “Ruznamih-i-Shaikh Fazlullah”, and published leaflets. He believed that the ruler was accountable to no institution other than God and people have no right to limit the powers or question the conduct of the King. He declared that those who supported democratic form of government were faithless and corrupt, and apostates. He hated the idea of female education and said that girls schools were brothels. Alongside his vicious propaganda against women education, he also opposed allocation of funds for modern industry, modern ways of governance, equal rights for all citizens irrespective of their religion and freedom of press. He believed that people were cattle, but paradoxically, he wanted to “awaken the muslim brethren”.