Word: clericalization
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IRAN Free at Last Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, Iran's most prominent dissident cleric, a man once considered the natural successor to Ayatullah Khomeini, was released from house arrest in the city of Qom. Montazeri, who is in his 80s, was confined in November 1997 after he criticized the authority of Iran's conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Montazeri is a rallying point for those disaffected with the slow pace of reform. On his release, he told his supporters he would "continue to talk about issues and to act." See Also: Islamic Republic in Transition...
...reluctance by Indonesian officials to acknowledge a link? Because the Bali bombings remain controversial. J.I.'s suspected spiritual leader, the influential cleric Abubakar Ba'asyir, has been detained since October. But speculation in Jakarta continues that he is being protected by hard-line Islamic sympathizers at the top levels of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government. General I Made Mangku Pastika, the officer in charge of the Bali investigation, says he is convinced that Ba'asyir was a "teacher and inspiration" to the bombers. Pastika says Ba'asyir, who has not been connected to the Bali bombings, will go on trial...
...police had finished their search and withdrawn, handing over the keys to the mosque trustees. But Friday morning, the mosque was still shut - this time it was the trustees who had padlocked the building, and even had its lower windows barricaded in corrugated aluminum. The mosque's firebrand cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri, who lost one eye and most of two arms to a landmine in Afghanistan, was instead forced to hold Friday prayers in the street for some 150 worshipers, a service given protection by the police. The trustees have clashed for years with Abu Hamza, who effectively took...
...which was estimated at €2.3 million. The three-story, redbrick mosque has prayer halls to accommodate around 1,500 men, a warren of offices, a shop and, in the basement, a smaller prayer hall with room for 100 women. Toward the end of 1996, the anti-Western cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri became a preacher at the mosque, an appointment that upset many regular worshipers. In 1998 the trustees, using the mosque's status as a charity, moved to have Abu Hamza stopped from preaching because of his fundamentalist views. Several prominent terrorist suspects are known to have visited...
...Iraqis see things differently. An irate poultry-farmer and an outraged Muslim cleric last week denounced the inspections, claiming that their civil and religious rights had been violated. Anwar Mohammad, 59, said that the inspectors looking for biological weapons insisted on breaking open a sealed warehouse containing obsolete equipment. They found nothing, and now Mohammad is demanding "material and moral compensation from the UN," and an apology to him and his country. One scientist has already gone public with accusations of bribery and rudeness. When the inspectors visited 55-year-old Faleh Hassan's home in a posh Baghdad suburb...