Word: mecca
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...morning, three days after Rahman was killed, and Karzai calculates that it's the right time to call U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Presidents of Iran and Pakistan. He has 6,500 angry, stranded Afghan pilgrims on his hands--and no planes to fly them to Mecca. The U.S., Iran and Pakistan all oblige with aircraft. "For two days, I've had to turn this government into a national airline," Karzai says. "We've done nothing but send pilgrims to Mecca...
...Grand Mosque of Mecca standing before the ancient Kaaba, a rectangular stone room sheathed in black silk and cotton embroidered in gold with Koranic verses. I am about to perform one of the most significant duties of a Muslim: to circumambulate the Kaaba seven times, counterclockwise, after proclaiming, "Bismillah! Allah-o-Akbar!" (In the name of God! God is Great...
...many do.) Having performed the Hajj becomes a lifelong distinction celebrated with an honorific: I can now call myself Hajji Maseeh Rahman. And the Hajj is done en masse during one five-day period in the final month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Two million faithful have come to Mecca this year from virtually everywhere - Bosnia, the Ivory Coast, Michigan - and it feels like the most interesting year to be a Hajji since 1183, when a band of Crusaders tried crashing. It's been a rough year for far-flung Muslims, often minorities in their homelands, with allegiances torn...
...been stranded, hungry, thirsty and freezing in their white cotton robes and sandals. Their plight was largely a result of Rahman's incompetence: his staff had failed to fill out the necessary paperwork for two Saudi jumbo jets to land at Kabul and whisk the pilgrims off to Mecca...
...Abdullah's relations with the U.S. are complicated, that's nothing compared to his domestic conundrum. The Kingdom's Islamic establishment had free rein during Fahd's years - an attempt to curry favor after zealots seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979 and hard-liners criticized the hosting of U.S. troops for the Gulf War. As a result, the Islamic establishment has grown in size and strength to the point that Saudi leaders are terrified of confronting it head on. The religious sheiks give the al Saud Dynasty a vital cloak of protection against political opponents. So does...