Word: islamics
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...shadow of its former self - with only 13 of the 43 armed groups that once comprised it still actively engaged in violence, and with much dissent among them - it is by no means a spent force. Some groups appear to have heeded the ISI's call for unity. The Islamic State of Iraq and Ansar al-Islam - which worked with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before the U.S. invasion in 2003 - have quietly formed a new alliance, pooling their intelligence and efforts, according to sources within both the insurgency and the Sahwa. (See a brief history of the Iraq...
Home to the Al Azhar mosque and university, the great centers of Islamic scholarship, Cairo has long influenced the thinking of Muslims everywhere. It is also, in many ways, the birthplace of radical Islam and of the precepts that underpin terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. (Read TIME's Middle East blog...
Crucially, this latest wave of Islamic thought is not led only by men. Eman el-Marsafy is challenging one of the strictest male domains in the Muslim world--the mosque. For 14 centuries, women have largely been relegated to small side rooms for prayer and excluded from leadership. But el-Marsafy is one of hundreds of professional women who are memorizing the Koran and is even teaching at Cairo's al-Sadiq Mosque. "We're taking Islam to the new world," el-Marsafy says. "We can do everything everyone else does. We want to move forward...
Waiting for Obama The ferment in the Muslim world has a range of implications for President Barack Obama's outreach to Islam. Gallup polls in Islamic societies show that large majorities both reject militants and have serious reservations about the West. "They're saying, 'There's a plague on both your houses,'" says Richard Burkholder Jr., director of Gallup's international polls. Many young Muslims are angry at the outside world's support of corrupt and autocratic regimes despite pledges to push for democracy after 9/11. "Most of the young feel the West betrayed its promises," says Dhillon...
...results, not just hope, before naming my children after a leader," he wrote. Such pragmatism is typical of the Muslim world's soft revolutionaries. They believe that their own governments, the Islamist extremists and the outside world alike have all failed to provide a satisfying narrative that synthesizes Islam and modernity. So they are taking on the task themselves. The soft revolution's combination of conservative symbols, like Islamic dress, with contemporary practices, like blogging, may confuse outsiders. But there are few social movements in the world today that are more important to understand...