Word: moslem
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...relinquished power, the nation would be racked by a renewal of the tribal hostilities that claimed more than a million lives during the fratricidal Biafran war of 1967-70. His fears were based partly on the bitter controversy generated by publication of suspect 1973 census figures. Those ranked the Moslem Hausa and Fulani tribesmen of northern Nigeria as more numerous -and therefore more politically powerful under the proposed electoral system-than the predominantly Christian Ibos of the south and the Yorubas of the west...
Lebanon's gargantuan governmental crises, as well as the bloodshed that accompanied the latest one, are symptomatic of the country's central problem: the Middle East conflict is bringing terrible pressure on the political compromise that Lebanon's Christian and Moslem communities have lived by for more than 30 years. Until recently, the Lebanese have prided themselves, perhaps complacently, on their ability to remain somewhat aloof from the Arab-Israeli struggle. Frightened and disillusioned by this year's internal fighting, many Lebanese are now wondering how much longer the situation can last...
Larger Hand. As hammered out in the National Covenant of 1943, the Christian and Moslem communities reached an unwritten understanding that the President of the republic would be a Maronite Christian, the Premier a Sunni Moslem and the speaker of the unicameral Parliament a Shi'a Moslem. In addition, they agreed that Christians would prevail over Moslems in the legislative and executive branches by a ratio of 6 to 5. That seemed reasonable in 1943, when Christians formed the majority of the population. Although there has been no census in Lebanon since 1932, the Moslems are almost certainly...
Leftist Extremists. In the recent fighting, as in the previous rounds, the principal forces involved were the Phalangists and the mostly Moslem leftist extremists. But the battle was soon joined by some hard-line fedayeen (though not by the P.L.O.'s Yasser Arafat, who attempted to serve as a mediator) as well as by bands of privateers who turned it into a sort of free-for-all. "Beirut has gone through another difficult night," the national radio mournfully announced each morning, before warning citizens to stay off the streets and appealing to the warring parties not to fire...
...would automatically have called out its army to put down the kind of civil unrest that beset Lebanon in the past fortnight. But Lebanon's 16,000-man armed forces, like the nation itself, are a special case. Since the high command is predominantly Christian, much of the Moslem population would have resented the army's presence-and the soldiers might have split along religious lines. So the government prudently allowed the troops to remain in barracks...