Word: islamics
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...Ismet Dertli puts the finishing touches on the curriculum for a new subject being offered in the city's public schools. It's a course that hasn't previously been taught in any government-sanctioned school, at least not for a few centuries: Turkish Alevism. This mystic brand of Islam is practiced by 25% of the more than 2.5 million Turks in Germany and up to 30% of Turkey's 66 million people - though you won't find them in any census. That's because Turkey, mindful of its fractious past, forbids large minorities from formally identifying themselves as anything...
...bombing spree began. "That's none of your business," he told the court. "I do as I please." Bensaïd no longer does as he pleases. He and Belkacem were convicted in 1999 on lesser charges related to the same French terror campaign - conducted by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (G.I.A.), an Islamist organization with reputed al-Qaeda-links that has waged war against the Algerian government since 1992. Both have admitted G.I.A. membership; Belkacem is serving a 10-year sentence, and Bensaïd 10- and 30-year terms. But the men provide more than an example...
...Somewhat like Paul, Islam concluded that God chooses his people on grounds of commitment rather than lineage, meaning that Abraham's only true followers are true believers--i.e., Muslims. Moreover, if Allah ever had a pact with the Jews as a race, they backslid out of it in episodes such as the worship of the golden calf in the Torah's book of Exodus. Indeed, the Koran advises Muslims proselytized by either Jews or Christians to answer, "Nay... (we follow) the religion of Abraham...
...common ground, in 1998. (The U.N.'s Kofi Annan subsequently adopted the gesture.) Observers assumed Khatami was crafting a smoke screen for political talks. But the former professor of Eastern and Western philosophy seems to regard Abraham as a mascot for his comparatively humanistic, open-minded brand of Islam...
...historical oddity and a hopeful sign that as the three religions battled over Abraham, they continued (without admitting it) to swap Abraham stories. The borrowings and counterborrowings, as old as the conflicts, make far more pleasant reading. The most heartening may be an Islamic tale cited by Feiler whose roots, scholar Reuven Firestone hypothesized, reach into both Judaism and Christianity. It is set after Abraham's near sacrifice of his son, whichever son it was. The moment of truth is just past; the father's hand is stayed. As the boy lies stunned on the altar, God gazes down with...