Word: ashura
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...next five years, he travels around the planet, from Afghanistan to Zanzibar, in what is not so much a journey of geography as an odyssey across the ummah - the global community of Muslims. The scope of the images - from the ultra-contemporary fashion shoots of Turkey to the primal Ashura rituals in Iraq, the artificial ski slopes of Dubai to the sea of pilgrims keeping vigil on Saudi Arabia's plain of Arafat - reveals the ummah not as a monolithic body of believers, but a complex collection of individuals each subscribing to Islam in different ways, their breadth and diversity...
...millions of Iranians make pilgrimages there every year. Just as Christians re-enact Jesus' procession bearing the cross past the 14 stops to Calvary before his crucifixion, so, too, do Shi'ites every year re-enact Hussein's martyrdom in an Islamic passion play during the holy period of Ashura...
...politics, but that the possibility of vote rigging by the ruling parties - as well as the manipulation of religious symbols by Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq to gain votes - are still real threats. "There are only three days between the local election and the 40th of Ashura [a holy day for Shi'ites]. Between now and the election, they will benefit from this," says al-Rubeiy. "I expect the religious parties to use sermons through [the holy month of] Muharram. They could spread very effective rumors that glorify...
...Stockholm in 1993, moved back in 2003, then returned to Stockholm last summer. He stood at the doorway of the Iraqi prayer hall in the Stockholm suburb of Jakobsberg late one evening. Six taxis were parked along the snowbound sidewalk while the drivers celebrated the Shi'ite holiday of Ashura inside. "The Swedes don't want to hire us" for skilled work, al-Suheil says...
...heresy. In Pakistan, moderate Muslims blame Wahhabi madrasahs as well as Iranian-funded Shi'ite seminaries for the escalation of Sunni-Shi'ite violence that has claimed more than 4,000 lives in the past two decades. In the latest attacks, three separate suicide bombings killed 21 during the Ashura rituals in January. In Lebanon, sectarian tensions have risen after years of relative calm. Hizballah, the Shi'ite militia, won praise from Sunnis when Israeli forces left Lebanon in 2000. But after the assassination in February 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, a Sunni, intra-Muslim antagonism began...