Word: muhammad
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...equally complex notion stands in its place: jihad. The term has become disturbingly familiar to Westerners, but its meaning is far broader than holy war, the sense in which it has been brandished by Saddam Hussein and numerous Middle East militants. In the Koran the Prophet Muhammad is depicted as a divinely inspired military leader who unified formerly separate Arab tribes around his new faith. While the Koran most often uses the concept of jihad in the military sense, the word actually translates as "striving." According to an authoritative tradition, Muhammad returned from one of his early battles saying...
During the century after Muhammad's death in 632, Muslim conquerors established sway from Spain to the borders of India. Islamic scholars of the era emphasized militaristic verses of the Koran over those that counsel peacemaking. Muslims spoke of the earth as being divided between the dar ul- Islam (realm of Islam) and the dar ul-harb (realm of war), implying a need for ongoing combat to extend the faith's domain. In succeeding centuries, as Muslims consolidated a multinational empire, the language of militant jihad faded...
Believers revived the term in modern times as Muslim areas fell under Western control or influence. One of the first to do so was Muhammad Ahmad, the 19th century Mahdi who raised an Islamic insurgency against British colonialism in the Sudan in the 1880s. The Ottoman Turks declared jihad against Britain during World War I. Calls to holy war took on new urgency, and new meaning, with the creation of Israel in 1948. Since then the term has been used -- and abused -- to justify at least three regional wars plus terrorism and murder, not only against infidels but also toward...
Bombast aside, the speech gave a strong clue to his plans, which struck some American politicians as a military adaptation of Muhammad Ali's "rope-a- dope" ring strategy: bob, weave, dance and duck until the opponent tires himself out chasing an elusive target; then hit hard. Saddam, in fact, has supposedly used very nearly those words. Says an Arab diplomat in Amman: "Before the war, he was telling everyone, 'We know that the first strike will be for the benefit of the U.S. But we are prepared for them to hit us for two or three weeks. After that...
...still easy to find. "The Federal Government is giving us more lip support than financial support," says William Celester, Boston police commander in Roxbury, Boston's toughest neighborhood. "People tend to believe that if you don't hear about the drug problem, it is somehow subsiding," says Don Muhammad, a minister for the Nation of Islam in Roxbury. "I feel it's going to escalate because of the economy. More people are going to resort to unethical and illegal means of earning a living...