Word: islamic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Cyrus Vance: "The Islamic resurgence in a number of countries indicates a return to fundamental roots and a greater reliance on principles that were pushed aside in the move toward modernization." The revival of Islam does not portend a regressive return to the past or a rejection of all international ties, in the Administration's view. Muslim nations will continue to require economic support from and want to cooperate with Western industrialized countries...
...strategic matters also, U.S. analysts believe that Islam and the West have compatible goals. Basically, Islamic states are antiCommunist. Says a senior State Department official: "I think we share a common concern and can work together to develop a set of friendly relationships, which can lead to ultimate stability in the region." Whether or not that proves to be the case, the West can no longer afford to ignore or dismiss the living power of the Prophet's message...
Perhaps the most reliable barometer of Islam's revival is observance of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that devout Muslims are expected to make at least once in their lifetime. Participation has been growing steadily since 1974. Last November's pilgrimage was the biggest in history. Nearly 2 million people converged on the arid Plain of Arafat near Mecca to live in tents and perform the arduous five-to seven-day ritual that has remained unchanged for 14 centuries. More than ever before, the pilgrimage was a spiritual kaleidoscope of races and faces and languages from 70 countries, from...
...renewed interest in Islam is most pronounced among the young. A prominent judge in Algiers is surprised to discover that five times a day his 14-year-old son joins a group of friends at a mosque for prayer. In Tunisia, whose President Habib Bourguiba has promoted equal rights for women, including divorce and abortion, students belonging to the militant Muslim Brothers wage war on "sin and evil" by painting over sexually suggestive cinema billboards and chalking quotations from the Koran on city walls. At Cairo University (enrollment: 130,000), hundreds of female Egyptian students have donned the veil...
...Islam has managed to survive, if not flourish, in the Communist world. The Soviet Union is now home to the world's fifth largest Muslim population (after Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). Officials in Moscow are notably fearful that the currents of fervor sweeping Iran might cross the border and infect the Islamic populations of Azerbaijan, Turkmen and other republics on the Soviet Union's southern tier. More than half of the estimated 11 million people in China's huge western province of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) are Muslim; a heavy propaganda campaign against the "opiate of the masses" has failed...