Word: islamics
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Says Graham Fuller, a Middle East specialist with the CIA during the 1980s: "There was a genuine visceral fear of Islam in Washington as a force that was utterly alien to American thinking, and that really scared us. Senior people at the Pentagon and elsewhere were much more concerned about Islam than communism. It was an almost obsessive fear, leading to a mentality on our part that you should use any stick to beat a dog -- to stop the advance of Islamic fundamentalism." That stick was to be Iraq...
...group of 40 Bangladeshis employed at the Meridien Hotel were living in its basement. On Feb. 23, they say, a squad of Iraqi troops stormed in and gave them 10 minutes to get out. "They parked two tanks in front of the hotel and shelled it," says Rafiq Islam Bulu, 29, from Dhaka. "When we came back, it was on fire." The Bangladeshis, he adds, lost everything they owned. That night the Iraqis also destroyed the offices of Air France and Saudi Arabian Airlines, the Gulf Bank and Kuwait's largest building, al-Montana complex...
Horwitz quotes the late Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini as having once said, "There is no fun in Islam." Yet the sartorially and culturally suppressed of trendy Tehran have their ways. The author and his wife are invited to a dinner party at an apartment in an affluent section of the Iranian capital. Once inside, the women slip out of their long, black chadors to reveal miniskirts and low-cut blouses. They are soon drinking bootlegged vodka and wiggling to pop music. Although the guests grudgingly respect the imam and are proud of their heritage, they are sadly aware of their predicament...
...religious authority to declare jihad? In Islam's dominant Sunni branch, that power formerly belonged to the caliph, or political successor of Muhammad, who united religious and temporal rulership. But no caliphate has existed since 1924, and Sunni jurists today believe the power rests with any legitimate Muslim political authority. Lufti Dogan, a former Turkish Religious Affairs Minister, says all Muslims can be called to jihad, but there is greater receptivity to the call in Shi'ism, the minority branch of Islam that is dominant in Iran...
...addition to a theological framework for the use of force, Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, offers moral rules for the conduct of combat. Early Muslim authorities vigorously opposed the mistreatment of children, women, diplomats and hostages and inveighed against poisoned weapons or abuse of natural resources (in enemy territory "do not hew down a date palm nor burn it . . ."). On those matters, and many others, Saddam Hussein is not much of a Muslim, whatever his claims...