Word: kingdoms
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...month stay in Nepal, my father joined me for a weeklong trek in the kingdom of Upper Mustang that had culminated with a night in the walled city of Lo Monthang and a visit with a king...
...Known as “the thumb in the eye of Tibet” for its northward-bulging border, the kingdom of Upper Mustang once lay along the major salt trade route from Tibet to India. It is part of the Annapurna Conservation Area, a small piece of Nepal that borders China and Tibet. The king’s title is the rather grandiose and redundant "King Mustangi Raja" followed by his name, Jigmi Palbar Bista. Although he holds less power since the constitutional monarchy began in 1951 (the central government controls most matters), he still wields a fair amount...
When the deaths of al-Huraisi and al-Bulawi hit the newspapers, Saudis were shocked, yet not entirely surprised. The morality police, whom Saudis sometimes derisively refer to as the "Taliban," are notorious for committing excesses in their fervor for enforcing the Kingdom's puritanical Wahhabi brand of Islam. Typically, squads of mutaween patrol streets and shopping malls, caning shopkeepers who fail to shutter their doors at prayer time, scolding women who allow flesh to show from under their mandatory black gowns, and lecturing adolescent boys caught following or talking to girls. By the commission's reckoning, its members "correct...
Though the Saudi economy is dependent on their skills, foreigners are not above the scrutiny of the mutaween, either. The religious police have raided Westerners' home churches (formal churches are forbidden in the Kingdom) to break up Christian services. Foreign residents complain of other incidents in which they have been singled out, including the case of a 25-year-old Mongolian woman who was accosted at a glitzy Riyadh shopping mall. Although the woman was clad in an abaya, a full-length black gown, a gesticulating mutawwa seemed bothered that her face and ankles were not covered, too. He shoved...
...important bridge to a larger - if extra-Biblical - argument. Unlike the Old Testament, the New is not overly concerned with the details of national governance. Partly because first-century Palestine was so firmly under the Roman heel, and partly because early Christianity was oriented toward citizenship in the Kingdom of God rather than of man, there's not much on how to drive down inflation or protect a border...