Word: imam
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...main foe, al-Qaeda, Musharraf is also creating new enemies at home. After months of prodding by the U.S., Musharraf has clamped down on some of the country's 13,000 registered madrasahs, or seminaries, which are al-Qaeda's richest recruiting ground in Pakistan. A prominent imam at Islamabad's Lal Mosque, Maulana Abdul Aziz, disappeared on Aug. 13 after police captured bin Laden's former chauffeur, who had borrowed the religious leader's car, according to police. The Arab driver was allegedly involved in the Independence Day rocket plot. "This is significant," says one Washington official. "Pakistan...
...analysts and intelligence agencies. Many Muslims say the global war on terrorism and the U.S. presence in Iraq have fueled perceptions that Islam is under attack. "We are passing through the hardest moments of spreading the moderate voice of our religion," says Sheik Khaled el-Guindi, 42, a moderate imam in Cairo. "Most of the pictures we see are of Iraqi heads stepped on by American Army boots. It is no longer just an occupation, but a humiliation." Says Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani cleric and Member of Parliament: "The U.S. and its allies must realize that by occupation...
...public spaces in the kingdom--no broadcast networks, no radio stations and few mosques--in which to voice their views. The extremists, meanwhile, feel no such constraints. The day before an attack by al-Qaeda militants on a compound in Khobar in late May that killed 22 people, the imam at the mosque in Medina dismissed terrorism as a "summer cloud" before ending with a typical rant against the Jews: "O vanquisher of the infidels, defeat them, shake them up, destroy them!" The failure of the Saudis to rein in such elements could prove disastrous were the clerics ever...
Tucked deep in a tangled warren of dusty alleyways, the golden dome of the Imam Ali shrine gleams in the afternoon sun. Its shining twin minarets reflect light on the ornately painted tiles that cover every surface not faced with gold. But the Old City ringing the glorious shrine, where millions of Shi'ite faithful come on pilgrimage, has been battered by three weeks of savage battle into a blasted warscape of empty, broken buildings. With the dramatic intervention last week of the Shi'ites' most revered leader, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, 74, the domed shrine was saved...
...IMAM ALI SHRINE, WE HAD to walk through the battlefield. Snipers' bullets buzzed past our heads and lodged in the wall, sending a fine dust of pulverized plaster over us as I, my interpreter Hussam and three Mahdi fighters on the street tumbled into an open storefront to escape the barrage. The militiamen stood between us and the door to shield us from the unrelenting fire. They were young, polite and dedicated to their cause. As they saw it, they were protecting their holiest site from infidel Americans. But the Mahdi fighters were perfectly willing to safeguard...