Word: meccas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...headed for port through the midwinter dusk, there was little about the M.V. Mecca that stood out from the other boats plying the waters off southern Bangladesh. Portworkers and fishermen noted the same squat deckhouse and plump hold that for centuries have sheltered fishermen from the cyclones of the Bay of Bengal. The Mecca had the usual rusted rigging and smoke-blackened stern. And the crew too was like most others working off Chittagong: pure Rohingyas?stocky Muslim refugees from western Burma. Only the thick salt marks high on the Mecca's bow hinted that it was ending a voyage...
...nine months the exact nature of the Mecca's cargo or the shipment's eventual destination remained unknown. But there were clues. Portworkers that night said they saw five motor launches ferry in large groups of men from the boat wearing black turbans, long beards and traditional Islamic salwar kameez. Their towering height suggested these travelers were foreigners, and the boxes of ammunition and the AK-47s slung across their shoulders helped sketch a sinister picture. Then in July, a senior member of Bangladesh's largest terrorist group, the 2,000-strong al-Qaeda-allied Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami...
...Mecca, its passengers' plans remained a mystery. One military source says most of the men stayed in Bangladesh rather than merely transiting, although he adds it was not clear whether the group sought only refuge or planned to establish a new base of operations. On Sept. 24, a fuller picture finally began to emerge when Bangladesh's domestic intelligence agency arrested four Yemenis, an Algerian, a Libyan and a Sudanese at three houses in the upper-crust district of Uttara in Dhaka. Bangladeshi intelligence sources said they received information from "several" foreign agencies that the men?Abu Nujaid of Libya...
...Metin K??k, director of the Berlin center. "But we differentiate between Muhammad's inspired verse and the rules he came up with later on, when he was an administrator and warrior." That means no mosques, no five daily prayers, no separate worship for men and women, and no facing Mecca. Instead, Alevis pray in a circle, facing each other. In place of Islamic law, they have a 40-step process for achieving the mystical sense of oneness preached by Muhammad in the Koran's early verses. To create a single curriculum for Germany, the Alevis recruited a panel of people...
...with significant changes and additions. The Koran portrays Abraham as the first man to make full surrender to Allah. Each of the five repetitions of daily prayer ends with a reference to him. The holy book recounts Abraham's building of the Ka'aba, the black cube that is Mecca's central shrine. Several of the rituals performed in that city by pilgrims making the hajj recall episodes from his history. Those who cannot journey still join in celebrating the Festival of Sacrifice, in which a lamb or goat is offered up to commemorate the same near sacrifice...