Word: koran
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That "if is the block on which all the book's dialogues stumble. Naipaul thinks that the rest of civilization cannot be ignored; his partners disagree. He argues that the Koran alone is an inadequate blueprint for a functioning state...
...Nile Delta village of Mit Abu el Kom. His father was a military hospital clerk, his mother an illiterate Sudanese. He spent his early years working in the fields and attending the village kuttab, an Islamic school where he learned to read and write and studied the Koran. It was the beginning of the lifelong religious faith that, in later years, left the familiar Muslim mark on his forehead from touching the floor in frequent prayer...
...among the country's Muslims, and in the wake of the violent incidents this spring and summer, some Copts began to fear for their physical safety. As Matta puts it: "All of us are in this dilemma, [because] Muslims feel Shenouda is a threat to Islam and the Koran. He was working against the line of the government and moderate Muslims." Most Copts feel that Shenouda's ouster is a tolerable price to pay for communal peace...
...average interest rate on SAMA's unadventurous investments has been about 10%, and as a top SAMA official admits, their return has not kept pace with U.S. inflation. Yet the Saudi moneymen remain cautious, in part because they are relatively inexperienced. Since the Koran forbids the charging of interest, Western-style banking came late to the kingdom, and even today the Saudis use such phrases as "service fee" and "return on investment" as euphemisms for interest...
...cars and pickup trucks and on motorbikes, thousands of small armed militia groups "headed toward the front. Civilians organized convoys of food, clothing, medicine and fuel. As each newly formed battalion set off, townspeople showered it with flowers and made it pass under a copy of the Holy Koran -a Persian tradition aimed at exorcising evil. With stoic fatalism the young bride of a soldier who had just left for the fighting remarked: "Life is a borrowing from God. It must be returned to him when he so wants...