Word: islamic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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More Moslems (68 million) live in the Republic of Indonesia than in any other nation. They are mostly docile peasants, content to harvest their rubber, rice, sugar, tea and coffee, but on one subject the Indonesians are as explosive as their island volcanoes: religion. Islam provided both the force and the fervor that ousted the Dutch in 1949; today, a fanatic guerrilla organization, Darul Islam (the Abode of Islam) threatens the unsteady republic with chaos and civil...
...Darul Islam's leader is Kartosuwirjo, a 46-year-old mystic, who holds court in the rugged mountain fastnesses of western Java. Against the Dutch, Kartosuwirjo's tactics were simple and effective: kill, rape, loot and burn. His religious concept is medieval: death to unbelievers; his politics uncompromising: Darul Islam wants a Moslem theocracy. When Kartosuwirjo discovered that the leaders of the newly independent Indonesia planned a secular state without him, he turned his 10,000 well-armed fanatics against the republic...
Sitting cross-legged in their stocking feet in Cairo's vast, thousand-year-old El Azhar Mosque, Islam's two most important military chiefs, Egypt's General Mohammed Naguib and Syria's Colonel Adib Shishekly, heard an ancient, chilling summons. "A jihad (holy war) for the right and defense of the freedoms of people," demanded the sheik in his sermon. The jihad was designed to support "our brothers in North Africa in their struggle against imperialism" and to teach France an "eloquent lesson...
Actually, there would be no jihad. The Koranic doctrine-which once spelled unremitting, no-quarter battle between the Abode of Islam1 and the Abode of War until Islam triumphed-has softened to a practical acceptance of co-existence of Moslem and infidel. As the Moslem world grew weaker, fanatics called louder & louder for jihad, but met less & less response. When the degenerate Turkish Sultan-Caliph proclaimed a jihad against the Allies in 1914, it was cynically dubbed the "Holy War Made in Berlin." It was the last real jihad and an utter failure...
Tahmassebi's next call was on Navab Safavi, hard-working boss of the terrorist Fadayan Islam (Crusaders of Islam), which plotted Razmara's killing. Safavi was himself in jail on suspicion of murdering other moderates, but in present-day Iran that is a mark of distinction. The two wept at the reunion, and Tahmassebi said: "Thanks to God we succeeded in our task." Over fruits and sweets served in his cozy cell, Safavi boasted: "I am such a powerful man that if I decide at any time, the gates of this prison will be opened...