Word: islam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fled and business has come to a standstill. He is counting on a cease-fire by the end of October, although he agrees that the Iranians will not easily give up their dream of capturing Basra. "Most of the Iranians are members of the Shi'ite sect of Islam, and they want Basra," he explains, "because they know the Shi'ites here will welcome them with open arms. The Shi'ites are not saying anything these days. They are waiting for the Iranian army to get here before they show their true feelings." All the commanders...
...painfully and to tally clear," Shultz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the "legitimate needs and problems" of the Palestinian people must be resolved. He might well have added that the West's failure to solve the Palestinian problem has had a lot to do with giving Islamic fundamentalism its anti-Western basis of action. The more ambitious Khomeini's forces become, and the more expansionist his goals in the name of Islam, the more vital it is that the U.S. have a Middle East policy that is perceived to be consistent and fair by all moderate parties...
...even chance of unseating the ruling government. At immediate risk were the moderate, hereditary regimes of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the gulf. But the Ayatullah Khomeini's vow was even more explosive: to press on to Jerusalem, to liberate the Holy City and overwhelm all enemies of Islam...
More serious still, the pressures induced by the wars in the Middle East have drawn the U.S. and the Soviet Union into dangerously confrontational positions, for the struggles involve not only the warring armies of Islam but future control over the Persian Gulf and the largest known petroleum reserves on earth...
With the death of the Prophet Muhammad in A.D. 632, the conflicts that led to the great division of Islam between Sunnis and Shi'ites began. Today the Sunnis account for more than 80% of the world's 750 million Muslims, but the Shi'ites who predominate in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain and who have unstable minorities in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Kuwait, generate fears far out of proportion to their numbers. . . . The Shi'ites believe that the leadership of Islam should have remained in the Prophet's family. The Sunnis prefer to make such...