The government was pressing for changes that would benefit groups that were previously oppressed, both legally and socially. Conservatives were bewildered and frustrated by the changes, which, in their eyes, overturned hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of years of precedent.
When the inevitable backlash came, it was furious and comprehensive. The country would never be the same again.
Is this Iran in 1979, the US in 2016, or Saudi Arabia in 2018? You decide.