Word: easternism
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...Kwame is sprightly for his age. When I first met him in April last year, he was wearing loose-fitting gold-colored trousers, a gold shirt and a small gold skullcap all made from the same embroidered fabric. He welcomed me into his modest rented home on the eastern edge of Accra, pumping my hand with the energy and strength of a man 20 years younger. The inside walls of his living room were painted electric blue, and a gold vase of plastic flowers sat on the coffee table. There was a small television in the corner, and a telephone...
...that has consumed Iraq, threatens to erupt in Lebanon and could spread to Pakistan and the gulf. The U.S. can't completely distance itself from the Saudis--in our weakened position, we need their help. But neither should we let them enmesh us in a Middle Eastern cold war, fought along religious lines. That's why Washington needs to make its own overtures toward Iran, so that our relationship with the region's biggest Shi'ite power doesn't go through Riyadh. Turning U.S. foreign policy over to the Saudis is perilous. We should know that...
...contaminates even the memory of a shining moment of goodwill. On Aug. 31, 2005, a stampede among Shi'ite pilgrims on a bridge over the Tigris River in Baghdad led to hundreds jumping into the water in panic. Several young men in Adhamiya, the Sunni neighborhood on the eastern bank, dived in to help. One of them, Othman al-Obeidi, 25, rescued six people before his limbs gave out from exhaustion and he himself drowned. Nearly 1,000 pilgrims died that afternoon, but community leaders in the Shi'ite district of Khadamiya, on the western bank, lauded the "martyrdom...
...would become the modern states of Iraq, Iran, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. There are also significant Shi'ite minorities in other Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan. Crucially, Shi'ites outnumber Sunnis in the Middle East's major oil-producing regions--not only Iran and Iraq but also eastern Saudi Arabia. But outside Iran, Sunnis have historically had a lock on political power, even where Shi'ites have the numerical advantage. (The one place where the opposite holds true is modern Syria, which is mostly Sunni but since 1970 has been ruled by a small Shi'ite subsect known...
Iraq's Sunnis, for their part, have grown adept at playing to wider Middle Eastern concerns about Iran's influence in the region. Sunni politicians stoke these anxieties in the hope that Arab pressure on the Iraqi government will force it to give Sunnis a greater share of power. "If the Arab states don't come to our help, they will find [Iran] at their gate," says Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars. "For the sake of the entire Muslim community worldwide, the beast has to be destroyed in Iraq." For leaders of terrorist...