Word: muslimism
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...lights never went out, and the rumored orgy failed to materialize. Still, from the point of view Turkey's Sunni Muslim authorities, a hundred other heresies were committed on a recent evening at the Alevi Muslim prayer service in Istanbul's working-class Okmeydani neighborhood. Most noticeable were the girls without headscarves, flirting with boys in the open entrance hall. Then there was the laxity: With no call to prayer ringing from loudspeakers, worshipers straggled in late, while one of the religious leaders joked about having to compete with TV sitcoms. When the service did start, it was far from...
...dance, while the group's pro bono lawyers fight for Alevi rights in court. Last year, an Alevi parent, angered by compulsory religion classes his teenage daughter had to attend at school, took Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights and won. The court ruled the predominantly Sunni Muslim curriculum "did not uphold the principles of pluralism and objectivity that a democratic society needs". It criticized the lack of information on Alevi beliefs, rituals and prayer forms, and urged remedy. The government has so far refused to change the curriculum...
...stranded merchants mill around helplessly. Many hold passports from a list of 33 countries, mostly from South Asia and the Middle East, whose citizens are now barred from applying for any entry permit to China in Hong Kong-a sign, perhaps, of China's concern about a potential Muslim terror threat. Mohammed Salim, a Karachi-based trader who makes his living selling fake watches from China, says consular authorities in Pakistan instructed him to obtain his Chinese visa in Hong Kong. But after arriving he was told he would only get a visa for the mainland if he returned...
...Turkey's entrepreneurial efforts and the youthfulness of its population, 70% of which is under 35. The region's growing economic clout, says Gerald Knaus, director of the European Stability Initiative, an Istanbul-based think tank, suggests that divisions in Turkey between wealthy, secular élites and the conservative Muslim middle class are disappearing. "We are seeing the transformation of an agrarian society into an industrial economy," he says...
Jimmy Carter has a mixed record on post-presidential peacemaking. He helped oust a Haitian dictator and set North Korea on a path to freezing its nuclear program in 1994 but later that year inked an unofficial cease-fire with Bosnian Serbs months before they slaughtered 8,000 Muslim civilians at Srebrenica. Now Carter has riled the Bush Administration by talking to leaders of the militant Palestinian group Hamas in Syria...