Word: islamics
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...Your unprecedented holy war and steadfastness are beyond the limits of my description. It's a divine victory. It is a victory for Islam." AYATULLAH ALI KHAMENEI, Iran's Supreme Leader, lauding Hizballah after a cease-fire was declared between the Lebanese militants and Israel...
...Christianity reflects a wider religious awakening. Long criticized by Western governments and human-rights groups for its virulently antireligious policies, China's central government has in recent years adopted a more lenient attitude toward religious expression. Traditionally, the Communist Party allowed membership in five officially approved religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestant Christianity and Catholicism. Anything falling outside those groups was officially shunned. Even those adhering to "approved" religions have to register to worship in churches and temples approved by the state. But those rules are becoming harder to enforce. These days, Chinese flock to everything from mystical Taoist sects...
...used to be a model Christian, studying the Bible, attending church and taking religion classes at school. "But I had certain reservations," he says, "certain question marks in my mind--some theological, some societal--that I wanted to reconcile." He went to Southeast Asia to find himself and explored Islam there. At 25 he settled in London, where friends helped him learn more about the faith. A year later, he converted and soon joined Hizb ut-Tahrir, a political party known for its radical views that is banned in many Muslim countries. Harwood, 45, is now a spokesman...
That sentiment rings true for growing numbers of Westerners, reared on other faiths or none at all, who are converting to Islam--despite the fact that relations between the Muslim world and the West have rarely seemed so strained. Although figures on conversions to Islam in Western countries are difficult to nail down, it's safe to say that Muslim converts in the U.S. and Europe number in the hundreds of thousands, and anecdotal evidence suggests the number is on the rise. The arrest of at least three English converts in the plot to blow up passenger jets over...
...vast majority of converts are, like the vast majority of Muslims, moderates who reject the extremism espoused by al-Qaeda and its ilk. But as with any religion, converts to Islam tend to be more devout than those born into the faith. And it's indisputable that some converts do, in fact, become terrorists, including shoe-bomb suspect Richard Reid; Jose Padilla, the Chicago native arrested four years ago for involvement in an alleged al-Qaeda plot to detonate a radiological bomb; and Germaine Lindsay, a Jamaican-born Briton who was one of the suicide bombers who attacked the London...