Word: muslims
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...their laws on the Koran. In Egypt, which prides itself on its Western-style sophistication, a parliamentary commission is at work on a new code, based on Islamic law, that would make apostasy, among other crimes, punishable by death. A rider to the proposed bill provides that if a Muslim becomes a Communist he would be considered apostate and therefore subject to beheading...
...North Yemen, a convicted thief is required to pick up his chopped-off hand and raise it to his forehead in a salute to the presiding judge. That sort of thing is not done in more liberalized Muslim societies like Libya. Although Strongman Muammar Gaddafi imposed Koranic law in 1973, thieves are usually jailed instead of having their hands amputated. "We want these people to work," says a Libyan police official. "How can they work if we cut off their hands...
Egypt has had its share of assassinations and random killings in the past, but there was something malevolently different about the Zahaby case. His alleged murderers were members of an extremist Muslim sect called Jamaat al Takfir wal Hijra (the Society for Repentance and Retreat), which has blended the urban terrorist tactics of West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang with something akin to the perverted zeal of Charles Manson's spiritual slaves. The society, which believes in repentance for sin and retreat from the evils of the modern world, is far more extreme than even the archconservative, fundamentalist...
...also worked to eliminate the society. His murder provoked a religious and political storm. The council of ulama, or scholars, of Cairo's Al Azhar University, the most venerable group of theologians in Islam, solemnly denounced the extremists for "violating the teachings of Islam" by killing a brother Muslim. Police, meanwhile, launched a dragnet that hauled in 190 sect members. At week's end Moustafa was nabbed by police and reportedly confessed to having ordered the assassination. A young bricklayer has admitted he shot Zahaby. But three bombs believed to have been set by the group exploded...
When Syrian forces began attacking Palestinian troops and their Muslim leftist allies during the Lebanon civil war, a worried Yasser Arafat flew to Saudi Arabia seeking help. To the dismay of the Palestine Liberation Organization leader, the Riyadh government refused to intervene with Damascus. But as a kind of consolation prize, Crown Prince Fahd expansively wrote Arafat a check for $5 million...