Word: islam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...become a habit in Pakistan that whenever a ruler's popularity disintegrates, he or she begins waving the scimitar of Islam. Never mind that not once since Pakistan became a nation 51 years ago has this noisy brandishing of faith ever worked to bolster the leader's popularity. Now, with Pakistan ostracized after its nuclear tests and on the edge of economic collapse, Prime Minister Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif is reviving the old custom of trying to make the Islamic Republic of Pakistan even more Islamic than it already...
...among Muslims has become so fierce that some clergymen post bodyguards at their mosques to guard against bomb throwers speeding by on motorcycles. In Karachi, kidnappings of clergymen have become routine; their mosques are then seized by adversaries who try to convert the prayergoers to a harsher vision of Islam...
...Sharif's countrymen think it could send Pakistan into terminal decline. According to the well-respected Karachi newspaper Dawn, people "just want a little improvement in their lives from the tyranny and callousness of Pakistani officialdom." Political opponents, including, of course, ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, say the new Islamic bill is likely to increase that tyranny. One interpretation holds that this amendment will anoint Nawaz Sharif as a religious dictator, a supreme arbiter of what is considered good and evil under Islam. Nawaz Sharif, though, contends that only a strict adherence to Shari'a--which relies on the Koran...
...politics, are displeased with the Prime Minister, and some analysts fear that Nawaz Sharif's actions may increase friction between the pro-Western secularists and religious extremists within the ranks. Warns Maleeha Lodi, a newspaper editor and former ambassador to Washington: "Nawaz Sharif is trying to wrap himself in Islam. Perhaps he doesn't know that this will drive deeper wedges into a society that's already badly fragmented...
...real problem--race relations--has reared its swelling head twice already this month in New York City. First, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani tried to prevent, or at least minimize, a Million Youth March in Harlem organized by Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a former aide to Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan and a proven hate-monger...