Word: clerics
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...officials are awaiting confirmation that a Yemeni air strike killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American cleric who exchanged email messages with the alleged Fort Hood Shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan. Counterterrorism officials and experts have differing views on Awlaki's importance to the wider jihadist cause. "The death of Awlaki would deprive al-Qaeda of a prominent face, a prominent voice, and someone who'd gotten involved in operations," says one counterterrorism official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to discuss the air strike with the media...
...Peter Bergen, an Al-Qaeda expert at the New American Foundation, says Awlaki was merely "important as an inciter to jihad, no more." Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University says it's unlikely Awlaki would have beeen involved in operational activities. "He was a cleric, not a field commander," he says. (See the effect of Al-Awlaki's sermons...
Grand Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazeri was known as Iran's defiant cleric, first in challenging the autocratic rule of the Shah, and then later in confronting the very revolution he had helped foment. Now, the big question in Tehran is whether his sudden death of natural causes will catalyze a broader showdown between the regime and the opposition Green Movement...
...about Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 at Fort Hood in Texas, could be Webster's trickiest assignment yet. The Nov. 5 shootings have raised a host of nettlesome issues regarding Hasan and his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric in Yemen, and why the FBI decided not to raise the alarm about Hasan even though it had tracked his suspect communications. In the aftermath of the shootings, critics have raised questions not only about intelligence-sharing, but also about whether the U.S. Army psychiatrist successfully used the cloak...
Equally, the American Muslim Center could hardly be less threatening. The imam, Mohamed Mardini, is a moderate cleric with strong ties to city and state officials; when the CIA hosted a dinner in Dearborn recently, he sat at the head table with Director Leon Panetta. Mardini invites non-Muslims to drop by and observe prayers and holds interfaith discussions in his office. His mosque doesn't even look out of place among the suburban homes along Outer Drive: the building used to be a Bible church...