Word: azhar
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...problem. That was the message last week from a Cairo conference organized by the Arab League and the U.N. Development Program, which drew together more than 300 leading religious figures from 20 Arab countries, and was jointly led by Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque - which is influential throughout the Sunni Muslim world - and Pope Shenouda III, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church and President of the Middle East Council of Churches...
...British suspects detained in Pakistan as part of the investigation into the alleged plot to blow up planes flying from Great Britain to the U.S. is connected to the militant Islamic leader Maulana Masood Azhar, one of India's most wanted terrorists. Azhar family members told TIME that the sister-in law of Rashid Rauf, 25, who Pakistani intelligence officers fingered early on as a "key suspect," is married to Azhar's brother...
...further link, the father of Rauf's wife and her sister runs Darul Uloom Madina, one of Pakistan's biggest and most hardline seminaries, with some 2,000 students, in Bahawalpur, Azhar's hometown. Rauf's arrest in Bahawalpur was one of the events that prompted British police to swoop in on the suspected London conspirators last Thursday, for fear they would become suspicious if they lost contact with such a central figure in their plans...
...Although Azhar, in his late 30s, is now in hiding, he continues to lead the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad, which is opposed to Indian rule of the disputed region of Kashmir and is said to have been behind the 2004 assassination attempt of President Pervez Musharraf and several other terror attacks. Azhar founded the group after he was released from an Indian prison in December 1999 in exchange for 155 passengers from a hijacked Indian airliner. Another prisoner released at the same time was Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, a militant close to Jaish-e-Muhammad who was subsequently convicted...
...While senior Pakistani officials do not believe Azhar is directly linked to recent terrorist activity in Pakistan or to al-Qaeda, it is believed rebel members of his group are now forging links with Osama Bin Laden's Afghanistan-based network...