Word: islamics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reaction of the Muslim world to the now infamous Muhammad cartoons continues [Feb. 20]. It is clear that reason will never play a role in that. Zealots and moderate Muslims alike continue to denounce the cartoons as an attack on Islam. What they fail to realize is that a handful of cartoons intended to be published only once is not a war. The horrible irony is that the real war--the terrorists' war--is not just a war against the West. In the end, the majority of victims will be Muslims killed by Muslims...
...into a tunnel directly under al-Askari. The two imams buried in the shrine were the Mahdi's father and grandfather. Most Shi'ites believe that the Mahdi will one day reappear as a messiah to bring justice to the world. That makes al-Askari one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites, exceeded in veneration only by the shrines of Najaf and Karbala. Even Samarra's Sunnis hold al-Askari in high esteem. The expression "to swear by the shrine" is routinely used by both communities. Insurgent groups that have occasionally operated out of Samarra since the fall...
Iraq doesn’t need a civil war—there is plenty of unrest as it is. Instead, in the wake of yet another act of terrorism by Sunni insurgents, Iraqi Shiites, and the global Islamic community, need to wage a new type of war, one in which suicide bombs and death threats are conspicuously absent: a civil war of words. Wordplay aside, such a campaign would be targeted not at the usual suspects of America and the West, but at the internal evil that has given Islam such a bad name. Once again, Jihad Momani, addressing...
...divide between Sunni and Shiite Arabs is currently Iraq's most volatile. The distinction between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam dates back to a 7th Century split over who would inherit the leadership of Muslims after the passing of the Prophet Muhammad. The Shiites believe that the Prophet had passed the mantle of leadership to his own descendants, first to his cousin and son-in-law, Imam Ali, who in turn passed it to his own son (and the Prophet's beloved grandson) Imam Hussein. They rejected the three Caliphs chosen by consultation among the Prophet's followers...
...traditions have different approaches to religious law and practice, and different notions of religious hierarchy, but both observe the same fundamental tenets of Islam. Although Shiism is the overwhelmingly dominant form of Islam among the Persians of Iran, in most of the Arab world Shiites are an impoverished and disenfranchised underclass. And the more extremist Sunni "Salafist" tradition that predominates in Saudi Arabia, as well as among the jihadists of al-Qaeda, denigrates Shiites as apostates. Within both Shiism and the Sunni tradition, however, there are a variety of different approaches to theological, legal and political questions, and they have...