Word: clericalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...India's "cash-for-fatwas" scandal broke out last weekend when a TV channel broadcast a sting operation that showed several Indian Muslim clerics allegedly taking, or demanding, bribes in return for issuing fatwas, or religious edicts. The bribes, some of which were as low as $60, were offered by undercover reporters wearing hidden cameras over a period of six weeks. In return for the cash, the clerics appear to hand out fatwas written in Urdu, the language used by many Muslims in Pakistan and India, on subjects requested by the reporters. Among the decrees issued by the fatwas: that...
...Adding to the shock in India, home to the world's third-largest Muslim population (approximately 150 million), is that some of the clerics apparently caught in the sting operation teach at important institutions - one belongs to India's most famous Islamic seminary, the Darul Uloom at Deoband. At least two of the clerics have been suspended from their posts, but that hasn't satisfied everyone. Students at one madrassa in north India denounced the clerics, and in the city of Meerut, where a mufti, or cleric, had been caught on camera, the congregation at one mosque refused to offer...
...recognized Muslim scholar in response to a question put to him. Since Osama bin Laden is no Islamic scholar, many deny his right to issue a fatwa. The sway that fatwas hold over Muslims is also not as great as many outsiders think. Last year, a Muslim cleric issued a fatwa stating that it was un-Islamic for Sania Mirza, India's most famous tennis player and a Muslim, to wear sleeveless tops or short skirts on court. Mirza simply dismissed the ruling; indeed, many, if not most, urban Indian Muslims do not take fatwas seriously. However, in rural communities...
...rare glimpse into Bush’s psyche was revealed in the fall of 2003, commentators almost universally saw it as a bad thing, but there might be something to be said for steering clear of the cavalcade of facts and (occasionally) half-baked opinions found in newspapers.The British cleric and essayist John Henry Newman, for one, despised the “parti-colored ingenuities” and “reckless originality of thought” that periodical literature seems to engender. He saw the continual arrival of deadlines as a type of “cruel slavery...
...would welcome a boost in money and weapons, if just to strengthen their hand against rivals. Analysts generally believe that Iran could in a short time orchestrate a dramatic increase in the number and severity of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. As Syed Ayad, a secular Shi'ite cleric and Iraqi Member of Parliament says, "America owns the sky of Iraq with their Apaches, but Iran owns the ground...