Word: imamate
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Nowhere is this rivalry more sharply drawn than in the arid sands and craggy cliffs of Yemen. There, in four years of sporadic skirmishing, the 50,000 Egyptian troops sent in by Nasser have been fought to a standstiil by tribesmen loyal to the ousted Imam Badr, who holds the hills and sustains his ragged army with supplies and arms from Feisal. Of late, however, Nasser has had less trouble fending off Feisal's royalist friends than in keeping in line the ragtag republican regime he sponsors in Yemen's capital...
Homosexuality is something of a tradition in backward Yemen, where Bedouin herdsmen roam the rocky hills for months on end with only each other and their animals for company. Male brothels flourish in San'a, the capital, and the late Imam Ahmad, who ruled the country for 14 years before his death in 1962, established an international reputation for overzealous camaraderie...
...member of the family escaped. The British overlooked the youngest of the prophet's twelve sons, who kept his father's sect alive, founded a cotton empire, and had six sons of his own. Today, El Mahdi's descendants again rule the Sudan. His grandson, Imam Hadi el Mahdi, is the stiff, unyielding religious leader of the sect to which most Sudanese Moslems belong. A great-grandson, Sadik el Mahdi, is a young British-educated economist who led the Mahdists' Umma Party to victory in last year's election...
Mahgoub was a rigid believer in the orthodox Mahdism preached by the Imam-too rigid, in fact, for his own good. Spurning conciliation, he turned the long-festering rebellion of the nation's three anti-Moslem southern provinces into a full-fledged civil war. He also alienated many members of his own government, a coalition of Umma and the Moslem National Union Party. With the coalition falling apart, Sadik last week decided that the time had come for him to move out of the back ground. Over the vociferous protests of his uncle, the Imam, he led Parliament...
Sadik could go a long way toward healing his nation's political divisions. First, however, he must find some way to silence the threat he faces from his own family. There is every sign that the Imam, still very much the leader of the Sudan's Mahdists, would very much like the prime ministry for himself...