Word: islamically
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...Turkey's religious-hate-speech statutes for reciting a poem that contained the lines: "Our minarets are our bayonets, our believers are our soldiers." He served four months in jail and was banned from public office for life. Yet last week the clean-cut populist was back. His pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party (AK) drubbed Turkey's secular old guard in the general election, amassing nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament - albeit with only one-third of the popular vote. With only one other grouping, the old-line Republican People's Party (CHP), making it into parliament...
...Sudanese government executed a theologian named Mahmoud Muhammad Taha for daring to question the Koran. The sages at Al-Azhar University in Egypt had found Taha guilty of apostasy for a thesis he developed in his book, The Second Mission of Islam. Taha argued that the Koran contains two categories of verses: those that the prophet Muhammad recited in Mecca and those recited in Medina. For Taha, the Medina verses, with their emphasis on legal rules, were written in a historical context that no longer exists, so Islam should instead focus on the spiritual and ethical message revealed in Mecca...
...country where the best-known Islamic preachers are stolid men in their 60s who quote from the Koran in Arabic and confine their sermons to the mosque, Aa Gym is unique. The flamboyant 40-year-old spreads his message of self-control, personal morality, tolerance and faith with televangelistic theatrics. Although Islam is the granite base on which his message rests, Aa Gym's sermons tend to dwell on the practicalities of daily life rather than the hazy hereafter. His stock-in-trade includes greeting-card clichEs, self-help nostrums and pithy doses of advice on how to cope with...
...inability to contain violence, the reality remains that militant views are held by a tiny minority of Indonesians. The tolerant, middle-of-the-road religion espoused by groups such as Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, which between them have a membership of some 70 million, is the true face of Islam. That may be another reason so many turn for reassurance to the charismatic Aa Gym, proudly positioned at the forefront of the moderate majority. He is a thoroughly modern Muslim. He advocates a 21st century religion that complements and enhances the benefits of technology. "Aa Gym has become big because...
...bravura performance is at the core of the man's mystery. Is he just "the Britney Spears of Islam," as he is characterized by Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, head of Indonesia's Liberal Islam Network? Is he merely a feel-good merchant who uses religion for his commercial ends? Or is Solahuddin Wahid, vice chairman of the 40 million-member Nahdlatul Ulama, right when he says that Aa Gym's "sincerity is his strength. He's creating a society based on his words and deeds...