Word: mecca
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...stucco house in the French village of Neauphle-le-Château, not far from the home of Brigitte Bardot. Five times a day French gendarmes stop traffic while the ayatullah (a Persian term meaning "sign of God") shuffles across the road in robes and black turban to face Mecca and kneel in prayer under an apple tree...
...Allah, save Jerusalem." Assembled outside Mecca last week for the beginning of the annual hajj (pilgrimage), 1.6 million Muslims prayed in fervent unison for the "liberation" of East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. A few days earlier, Israeli Premier Menachem Begin had given a rousing speech at an election rally in Jerusalem for local candidates of his Likud Party. He declared that a united Jerusalem was as much the capital of Israel as Washington was the capital of the U.S. "The only difference is that Washington has been a capital for 200 years...
COLOMBO. Sri Lanka--A chartered jetliner carrying 246 Moslem pilgrims home from Mecca crashed, split apart and burned yesterday a mile from Colombo's airport while being guided down in a severe thunderstorm...
Still to be settled, however, were strikes by 400,000 schoolteachers and the Iran Air employees. The airline walkout stranded some 20,000 devout Muslims headed for Mecca on the annual hajj (pilgrimage). A plea by religious leaders failed to get the workers back on the job to enable the pilgrims "to perform their religious duties toward Allah." The Shah himself stepped in and ordered the Imperial Air Force to transport the pilgrims to Saudi Arabia. Parents were growing impatient with the school closings, even if their offspring were not. Many schoolchildren took to the streets to join demonstrators...
...Arab states were as divided as ever. The Palestine Liberation Organization's de facto foreign minister, Farouk Kaddoumi, for instance, taunted the Saudis for their continued financial backing of Egypt. Unless the Arabs took joint action, he declared, "the Israelis will not stop until they have reached Mecca and seized your oil wealth." To which the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, replied tartly: "Mecca has a God to protect it. As for the oil, it has men defending it." By week's end the group had voted to raise $9 billion to strengthen Arab defenses against...