Word: islamize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...revival of Islam has been gathering force for more than a decade. Islam is no Friday-go-to-mosque kind of religion. It is a code of honor, a system of law and an all-encompassing way of life. To be sure, religious observance varies somewhat from country to country and person to person. Nonetheless, to the average Muslim, his faith is much more in evidence in everyday life than is Christianity to people in most Western lands. On Fridays, the Muslim sabbath, life comes to a halt in the factories, the marketplaces and the public squares. Men assemble their...
Everyday language contains countless reminders of Islam's basic belief that nothing on earth happens without God's will. Tell a Cairo taxi driver where you want to go, and he will answer "Inshallah " (If God wills). If a housewife finds tomatoes in the market, she may mutter "Al-hamdu lillah " (Praise be to God). The fellah in the Nile Delta will whisper "Bismillah" (In the name of God) as he sows his field. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat took a statesmanlike risk in making his historic trip to Jerusalem. Yet, as a devout Muslim, he knew that no mere...
...Much of Islam's resurgence can be seen as a quest for stability and roots, inspired by a disdain for Western values and for a kind of modernization that exacerbated economic and social problems in many Third World nations. Health clinics cut down on disease, but they also aggravated the population explosion in those Islamic nations where birth control is little practiced. Rapid growth of industry in cities provided jobs, but it also disrupted the sacrosanct family structure in villages as men streamed into cities in search of work...
Anwar Gamall, a senior at Cairo University, wonders why Egyptian television is clogged with American serials like Charlie's Angels and Police Woman. "What relevance do they have to life in Egypt?" he asks. "What are Muslims supposed to do? Emulate those lifestyles? Forget Islam and become a plastic person?" Nadia Fatim, a student at the same university, wears a modified veil and a floor-length robe. Says she: "It is a matter of identity. If you dress and behave Western, then you are compelled to be Western. But if you give yourself to Islam...
Marvin Zonis, a specialist on Iran at the University of Chicago, observes that in Iran and elsewhere, "Islam is being used as a vehicle for striking back at the West, in the sense of people trying to reclaim a very greatly damaged sense of selfesteem. They feel that for the past 150 years the West has totally overpowered them culturally, and in the process their own institutions and way of life have become second rate." Says John Duke Anthony, a Middle East expert in Washington: "We are witnessing a reformation. Within the Islamic world, there is a sense that changes...