Word: militiaization
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Iran claims its army whupped the Taliban in a firefight Thursday; the Afghan militia denies the incident even occurred. But the reported clash may be part of a strategy by Iranian hard-liners to undermine their moderate president. "This clash is part of a struggle for dominance in the Islamic world," says TIME correspondent Johanna McGeary. Shiite Iran wants the Sunni Taliban to hand over members who murdered eight Iranian diplomats earlier this year. It also accuses the Taliban of killing Shiite civilians inside Afghanistan, and has massed 200,000 troops on the border to underscore...
...quarreling among the country's 72 Muslim sects and subsects over the "pure" interpretation of the law. And this could be the worst of times for Pakistan to try to revive fundamentalist laws. Everything seems to be going wrong for Nawaz Sharif. His support of the Taliban militia in neighboring Afghanistan has drawn enmity from Iran and the Central Asian republics (see following story). India and Pakistan have intensified their cross-border artillery fire in disputed Kashmir. Nearly bankrupt, Pakistan may run out of foreign exchange by the end of the month, and the Karachi stock exchange imploded after...
...blasphemer with execution; a man can rid himself of a wife merely by saying "I divorce thee" three times. The more moderate Islamic states apply Shari'a to family and religion but not to legal and state matters. Take beards, for example: in Afghanistan, members of the ruling Taliban militia will grasp a passerby's facial hair in their fist. If the beard is shorter than the Taliban's fist, the offender is publicly whipped. But next door in Iran, Shi'ite Muslims believe that according to the Koran, a beard can be a stubbly 1 cm long. Nawaz Sharif...
Iran and Afghanistan, two of the most profoundly fundamentalist Muslim countries, sit side by side, but common faith doesn't make them friendly. In fact, each despises the other's brand of Islam. Now Iran's Shi'ite leaders and the Sunni Taliban militia that has nearly succeeded in imposing its rule over most of Afghanistan are threatening to turn an ancient theological schism into a fighting...
...should the Taliban, who roundly condemned the U.S. action against Bin Laden, be so upset at the terrorist chieftain? The Taliban is deeply dependent on financial aid from Saudi Arabia and on political and military support from Pakistan, and both nations are leaning on the ruling militia to rein in Bin Laden. The Taliban also wants to be recognized by the U.N. as Afghanistan's official government, especially now that it's squaring up for a confrontation with Iran. Bin Laden doesn't exactly have that many places to rest his head, so he will probably be persuaded to speak...