Word: islamics
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Even Muslim critics of the Bush Administration's style say that its post-9/11 push for political liberalization has helped rekindle debates that have long simmered across the Muslim world, encompassing everything from sexuality and gender roles to how Islam can accommodate the influence of democratic ideals and Western culture. In this, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979, had it right when he declared that Islam is inseparable from politics. In three Islamic countries whose destinies are vital to the security of the U.S.--Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Ayatullah's Iran--the political...
IRAN In 1983 Abdolkarim Soroush, a philosopher named by Khomeini to oversee the "Islamization" of Iran's universities, quit his job. Ever since, he has been a leading thinker in pushing the case for a reformed Islam and a democratic Iran, and slowly but surely the movement has gathered momentum. Today Iran's progressive Islamic thinkers are nothing less than intellectual pop stars among students in Tehran, with heady sales of books on such topics as Islamic reform and democratization...
...Iran, as elsewhere, the students matter. Twenty-five years ago, it was Iranian students who were the vanguard of the revolution that toppled the Shah and seized the U.S. embassy. Now they generally are fed up with a government run by Islamic clerics. Young Iranian women still wear the traditional head scarves, but many now wear them with tight-fitting jeans--at once a religious, political and fashion statement. Students recently packed lecture halls at Tehran University to hear a series of talks straightforwardly billed "Transition to Democracy." One of the speakers was Mohsen Kadivar, a young cleric who talks...
...vanquisher of the infidels, defeat them, shake them up, destroy them!" The failure of the Saudis to rein in such elements could prove disastrous were the clerics ever to decide to incite their followers to rise up against the regime--which bin Laden has called for. The determination of Islamic militants to topple the Saudi regime and gain control of 25% of the world's oil has only intensified in the past few years. If you compare Saudi Arabia, wellspring of Islam and home to its two holiest cities, "with European societies during the Middle Ages," says al-Hamad...
...Americans, the most critical front in the war for Islam's future lies in the country that is home to 135,000 U.S. troops: Iraq. Among the many unintended consequences of this war is that some of the most harrowing terrorist acts being carried out in the name of Islam are taking place in a country the U.S. had hoped to transform into a model of secular democracy in the Middle East. The chances that Iraq will resemble that ideal soon are all but gone. The danger now is that control could slip into the hands of jihadists--as parts...