Word: mecca
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Following a series of bitter verbal attacks by Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi, Saudi Arabia abruptly severed diplomatic relations with Tripoli. Gaddafi had charged the Saudis with "desecrating" Islam's sacred shrines in Mecca by allowing U.S. AW ACS surveillance planes to fly protective reconnaissance missions over the country's oilfields. The radical Libyan leader also called for a pan-Islamic jihad, or holy war, to "liberate the house of God in Mecca" - in effect, an incitement to overthrow the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia's normally placid King Khalid angrily denounced Gaddafi as "a Muslim outcast who deserves...
With their Muslim brothers embroiled in the Iran-Iraq war, 4,700 Israeli Arabs feared that they would not be able to make the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca. Day after day they waited for buses to meet them at the Allenby Bridge spanning the Jordan River, the boundary between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to begin their 18-hour overland journey to the holy sites in Saudi Arabia. Finally, on the tenth day of their vigil, the first of 125 dusty vehicles rolled into view. War or no war, the hajj would...
...most fretful country is Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer. Saudi leaders suspect that Khomeini was behind the seizure of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca last year, as well as subsequent disturbances among Shi'ites in their oil-rich Eastern province. In defense of their oil, the Saudi government last week put in a quick but urgent request for new military hardware from the U.S. Washington sent four highly sophisticated surveillance aircraft, which are known as AWACS and carry radar equipment sensitive enough to detect both high-and low-level bombers more than 230 miles away...
...Cambridge a lot of things have changed. His timeline of important dates in Cambridge's history is evidence enough. But one thing hasn't changed--for a relatively small city, Cambridge has an unusually strong record of producing important people, inventions and ideas. Always an intellectual and ethnic mecca, Cambridge has brought the United States everything from the porterhouse steak (served in the 19th century at Porter's Tavern) to the sewing machine to frozen yogurt. Eliot has compiled an unofficial list of "Cambridge firsts...
...sinks deeper and deeper into chaos. To the west, what is widely seen as Israel's intransigence emboldens radicals, undercuts moderates and enrages almost everyone in the Arab world. To the south, the memory of last year's attack by zealous dissidents on the Sacred Mosque in Mecca still sends shudders through the House of Saud and the monarchies that rule the gulfs ministates. In the waters of the gulf itself, a Soviet guided-missile cruiser and its frigate escort have replaced the Shah's navy in patrolling the shipping channel through the 40-mile-wide Strait...