Word: mullah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" The call to prayer echoes forth from a minaret in Tashkent, as it has from mosques throughout the 13 centuries of Islam. "Was it loud enough?" asks the mullah who will lead the prayers. That is an eminently reasonable question, since in the Soviet Union no muezzin is allowed to use a loudspeaker. The inquiry is also metaphorical. In the U.S.S.R.'s fourth largest city and leading Islamic center, as elsewhere across the nation, believers are cautiously regaining their public voice after an oppressively enforced silence...
...grandson of a Shi'ite mullah, Mughniyah trained with Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. A high school dropout, he excelled at terrorism; his boldness and quick grasp of explosives and weaponry impressed his commanders. But he fell out with Fatah leaders and in 1982, when Israeli troops invaded Lebanon and occupied his village, Teir Debbe, Mughniyah joined the newly formed and more radical Hizballah (Party of God). He took to wearing religious garb even as he recruited activists and professionals to the Shi'ite cause. He rose quickly to the top of the organization...
...Maulvi Younus Khalis, 70, the only political leader who also regularly serves as a military field commander, leads an independent faction of the Islamic Party. A former village mullah dismissed as something of a bumpkin by his rivals, Khalis sports a henna-dyed beard and in 1987 took a 16-year-old bride. He vehemently opposes elections; in his view, the only constitution needed for post-Soviet Afghanistan is the Koran...
...week, the group visited Kabul and Mazar-i- Sharif, a surprisingly peaceful city of more than 100,000 people on Afghanistan's border with the Soviet Union. One stop on the I.C.D.P. tour was a large, blue-tiled mosque, where about 1,500 men listened as a stooped, aged mullah read from the Koran. When several worshipers turned and glared at the intruders, however, the Afghan officials hustled the group out the door. The episode offered a possible indication of religious freedom, but not of any warmth toward the government...
...have had little to do with Weir's freedom. According to the Repatriation Front, the release was arranged by the Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, a religious radical and Khomeini's heir apparent. Montazeri was evidently chagrined by his rival Rafsanjani's diplomatic overtures and decided to one-up the mullah by showing that he had sufficient influence to win freedom for an American hostage. "It is clear that the Americans did not understand who they were dealing with," says one knowledgeable dissident. "It seems they thought they were still dealing with one Iranian government, just as they did under...