Word: meccas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Islam is central to the identity of the Saudi state, whose influence in the Muslim world is based on its stewardship of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam. The al-Saud family has held on to power by placating the kingdom's religious establishment, which is dominated by descendants of the 18th century Muslim cleric Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab. To defuse the religious leaders' hostility to modernization, the Sauds gave the Wahhabists broad power to dispense their forbidding brand of Islam in the country's mosques and schools and to regulate daily life in the kingdom. During...
...Speaking to Time in Jidda, al-Jubeir laid out the Saudis' case: "We play a moderating influence in terms of regional stability, oil markets and financial markets. And Saudi Arabia is the center of the Islamic world; 1.2 billion people around the world face Mecca in prayer. Wouldn't you want to have strong ties with a country that has this position?" Perhaps. But it's worth asking, At what cost...
...talent will continue, because the game continues to flourish beyond the professional level. American youth soccer has been criticized as merely a weekend pastime for most kids and their "soccer moms." And it is. Yet select teams from all over the country?even in Texas, that gridiron football mecca?are developing talent just the way the vaunted youth programs of Holland and France do. And consider the population the U.S. can draw upon...
...Last week's dramatic arrests of Al Tbaiti, 26, from Mecca, and two alleged Saudi accomplices, Hilal Alissiri, 31, from Najran, and Abdullah Al Ghamdi, 21, from Gueddana, was not simply a lucky break. The Moroccan agents ambushed the trio after tailing them for more than a month, the result of a tip from the CIA based on U.S. interrogations of al Qaeda members detained in Guantanamo...
...them, they acted like common thieves, robbing the Armenian priests of their crucifixes and blankets. If the situation were different and Christian militants were seeking refuge in a mosque or some other Muslim holy site, would they be granted sanctuary? Would the abuse of an Islamic holy site in Mecca be tolerated by Muslim clerics? Or would such actions be punishable by death? Since Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet, the least these fighters could have done was respect the site of his birth. In capturing the men without storming and invading the church, the Israeli army showed consideration...