Word: hanafi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...stranger say: "I know you feel guilty. Don't worry about it-it's normal." The man who impulsively made the call, Hank Siegel, should know. Siegel, a press officer for B'nai B'rith, was one of the 132 hostages taken by the fanatical Hanafi Muslims in 1977 when they occupied three buildings in Washington, D.C., for 38 hours. Because he had recently suffered a heart attack, Siegel was released early. But he was overcome by guilt for leaving his fellow hostages. Said he: "Quarles felt a lot better after talking...
Psychologists know that ex-hostages need that kind of reassurance, sometimes for months or even years after their release. Most hostages suffer some degree of psychological damage, a mix of helplessness, fear, rage and a sense of abandonment. During the Hanafi incident, says Siegel, "some of us felt we had left our bodies and were watching the whole scene from up near the ceiling." That kind of report raises fears for the stability of the American hostages in Iran, who have been under pressure six weeks longer than Siegel's group of captives. One sign of stress is known...
Though the U.S. Government knows little about the state of the hostages, and is saying even less, there are fears that some of the Americans may have already been broken by the experience and could denounce the U.S. at a staged spy trial. Charles Fenyvesi, one of the Hanafi hostages in 1977, writes in the New Republic that "had the siege gone on much longer, some of us would have broken down, one way or another. I shudder to think what more than 30 days of captivity might have done...
Some of the ex-hostages of 1977 still suffer from panic attacks and phobias connected with their relatively brief ordeal. Lillian Shevitz of B'nai B'rith says the Iranian crisis has triggered an overwhelming depression by bringing up painful memories of the Hanafi takeover. That pain, she says, "will be with us a long, long time...
Islamic law is based on the Koran and Muhammad's teachings as well as on clarifications made by later scholars. The law differs from country to country, depending on which of the four major schools of interpretation (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafei and Hanbali) is followed. Islamic justice can be harsh in an eye-for-an-eye manner. Judges tend to opt for severity rather than leniency if there is any doubt. An American couple in Saudi Arabia caught their Pakistani houseboy stealing one day and ordered him to report to the police. They were astonished when he returned home minus...