Word: imam
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...Imam Ali Hussein died 1327 years ago, but for the Shi'ite Muslim faithful in Kabul - and everywhere else - it might as well have been yesterday. There is a vivid intensity to their mourning of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad with black banners, dirges, funereal marches and somber sermons in mosques - and also by ritual bloodletting and physical mortification. Every year, during the festival of Ashura, Shi'ites symbolically punish themselves for their failure to rally to their imam at the Battle of Karbala and save him from his enemies in a conflict that marked the beginning...
...Imam Musa Sadr, a charismatic Iranian cleric, led the political mobilization of the Shi'ite community in the 1960s and 1970s, giving it a voice for the first time through his Amal (Arabic for "hope") movement. Hizballah was born with Iranian assistance in the early 1980s, to resist Israel's occupation of Lebanon. And by the 1990s, the dynamism of Hizballah and the demographic advantage of the Shi'ites had begun to eat away at the historical Sunni dominance of Lebanon's Muslim communities...
...Litvinenko had converted to Islam a few days before he died, in a kind of atonement for atrocities Russia (and perhaps Litvinenko himself) had committed in Chechnya, although another doubted any conversion had taken place. Litvinenko's widow Marina had requested a nondenominational service at the graveside, but an imam interrupted the proceedings to perform Islamic rites. Litvinenko, a former Moscow anticorruption detective turned furious critic of the Russian government, had a talent for controversy...
...There is a [criminal law] system working perfectly in this country and we should not be creating conflict between the laws of the land and religious law," says Mohammed Raza, imam and executive secretary of London's Shariah Council. "That would lead to further conflicts, misunderstanding and confusion which is not going to help in developing an integrated society where we all wish to live peacefully and respectfully...
...which radicalized Ma-ae's generation more than any other incident. Initiations take place at night. Each recruit swears allegiance to his cell on a Koran, then eats a piece of paper bearing 24 vows written in Arabic script, washed down with holy water blessed by the village imam. "After you've drunk it you don't feel fear," says Ma-ae. "You can even withstand the pain of torture without confessing...