Word: clericalization
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...School for Insurgency "The Lessons of Najaf" [Aug. 30] described the flip-flops of the rebellious cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Slowly but surely, Iraq is becoming a Shi'ite theocracy like that of Iran. There is absolutely nothing the U.S. can do about it. That change is due in part to the ever growing influence of Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, to whom the Iraqi government turned in order to broker an end to the rebellion in Najaf. Isn't that ironic, since it was Iran and not Iraq that sheltered al-Qaeda operatives...
...Iraq today, brute force is a wasting asset, as Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, knows firsthand. On a hot late-summer day, his soldiers entered Baghdad's Sadr City slum to quell attacks from militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Chiarelli's troops came under fierce fire as dozens of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) pounded their vehicles, and roadside bombs blew the tracks off a tank. For four hours, the two forces battled until the outmatched gunmen melted into the shadows. "We killed folks. There's no doubt we did," says Chiarelli...
...Iran, as elsewhere, the students matter. Twenty-five years ago, it was Iranian students who were the vanguard of the revolution that toppled the Shah and seized the U.S. embassy. Now they generally are fed up with a government run by Islamic clerics. Young Iranian women still wear the traditional head scarves, but many now wear them with tight-fitting jeans--at once a religious, political and fashion statement. Students recently packed lecture halls at Tehran University to hear a series of talks straightforwardly billed "Transition to Democracy." One of the speakers was Mohsen Kadivar, a young cleric who talks...
...spend nearly all their time memorizing the Koran in Arabic, even though few Pakistanis speak the language. Pakistanis say that so far the government has failed to build new secular schools that would provide an alternative to the madrasahs. Religious conservatives are trying to expand their reach: a Pakistani cleric and Member of Parliament has launched a campaign to shut down cybercafes throughout the country, describing the Internet as a "red-light district...
...Society of North America: "Other than from the spokesmen for these different terrorist groups, everything I've heard is a complete rejection" of the beheadings. Scholars at Cairo's venerable al-Azhar seminary condemned Berg's fate. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the learned star of an al-Jazeera ask-the-cleric show, has rationalized Palestinian suicide bombings, but said--albeit with some equivocation--that Berg's execution was not justified. Most scholars agree that the recent executions also sin against bans on mutilation of enemy bodies and mistreatment of prisoners...