Word: islamize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ramadan, Islam's holy month, ended last week with Id al-Fitr (Feast of the Fast-Breaking). As the new moon rose over the horizon, Arab families sat down to traditionally sumptuous meals of lamb, rice, mahshi and sharab (eggplant and yogurt), sticky sweets and fruits. The celebrations, dulled by the uncertainties in the Middle East, were unusually subdued among the 1,000,000 Arabs who live on the Israeli-occupied western bank and the Gaza Strip...
...between Israel and the Arab nations around it has stronger religious overtones than have most modern conflicts. There are, of course, the more expectable rites: Egyptian tanks rolled into the desert equipped with metal-jacketed copies of the Koran, Islam's book of divine revelation; in Jerusalem, soldiers carrying machine guns prayed before the Wailing Wall. But political and spiritual leaders have emphasized deeper spiritual dynamics...
Almost 2,000 years before Islam's rise, the ancient Jews took possession of their promised land under the rubric of divine command. As recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy, the idolaters occupying the area were to be annihilated completely: men, women, children, "as the Lord your God commanded you." Such enemies were herem-proscribed abominations whose pagan practices threatened contagion. History is unclear how often this "commandment" was carried out, but Joshua seems to have applied it with vigor against Canaan...
While the Jews seem to have retreated from the idea of sacred conquest to an ethic of self-defense, early Islam moved the other way. When his group was still small in the early years at Medina, Mohammed preached a doctrine of self-defense. "Fight against those who fight against you," Allah warns in the Koran's second sura. "But begin not hostilities. Allah loves not aggressors...
...Cairenes seem affected mostly by what the war has done to their observance of Ramadan-the holy month of Islam during which devout Moslems abstain totally from food, drink and tobacco from sunrise to sunset. From Cairo, TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn reports that "normally, Ramadan nights are more lively than the days. The Cairene's habit is to have an enormous 'lunch' at about 2 a.m. and go out on the town celebrating. But now, because of the war, restaurants shut at 11 p.m., as do most cabarets...