Word: ism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...suggests he prefers a different course. Born in Iran to a family of clerics, Sistani started memorizing the Koran at age 5, according to his official biography. In the early 1950s, he moved to the Iraqi city of Najaf, the site of one of the holiest shrines in Shi'ism. He later became a student of Grand Ayatullah Abul Khoei, who would turn out to be Iraq's leading cleric. As Saddam ruthlessly suppressed clerical activism, Khoei advocated "quietism," the belief that the clergy should mainly serve spiritual and social needs, and not focus on matters of state. Sistani quickly...
...branch for centuries, was in its long, final decline. His seminal text, The Book of Unity, attempted to recover what he saw as the original, pristine state of Islam by pruning out "innovations" that had polluted its essential monotheism. Wahhab's list of corruptions was sweeping; it included Shi'ism, the faith's minority strain, and Sufism, its mystical tradition. He discarded most of the interpretations of Islam's four great legal schools in favor of an exceedingly literal reading of punctilious ritual and enforcement by draconian punishment...
...Even before he attains such status, he does not hide his contempt many of the others who have. "I deny all marjah, except for Haeri, and I represent the second martyr (meaning his father) and not the Hawza (the supreme religious academy of Iraqi Shi'ism, located in Najaf)." Of the other marjah, he says, "some of them have no followers." He downplays the importance, both political and military, of one of the most senior marjah, Ayatollah Mohammed Sayeed al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its military wing, the Badr corps...
Barney sees all of what he produces as both stand-alone works and pieces of his never-ending puzzle. To an art world eager for the next new movement, he's like a one-man ism. Or is he? The Guggenheim Museum in New York City is giving him the largest show of his already formidable career. The museum's spiraling dome has been made over into a recondite theme-park pavilion, filled with banners, video screens, Barney's sculptures and other artifacts of the Cremaster series. In the downstairs auditorium the films play nonstop. He has always wanted everything...
Professional scholars, in contrast, seem to recognize the threat war poses to their interests. At the Faculty meeting on Tuesday, University President Lawrence H. Summers attempted to put an end to their hand-wringing by reassuring them that his PATRIOT-ism jibes with the University’s commitment to academic inquiry and civil liberties. Above all, the University must avoid admitting it is implicated in the oily mess overseas. When Adams House Masters Sean and Judith Palfrey sent an e-mail to Adams residents explaining why they had attended a peace rally, Summers declared it “unfortunate...