Word: religion
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Egypt to be the first country to feel the shock waves of their revolution. Sensing the potential for trouble, the government censored news of Iran's turmoil in the Egyptian press. Islamic fundamentalists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, are a growing force in the country. Islam is Egypt's state religion, but most of the ulama tend to support the government, in part because they are dependent on Cairo for religious funds. Many laymen, in fact, consider the ulama as part of the Establishment they seek to undermine. Last month Sadat issued a strong warning against religious interference in Egypt...
...mosques are full on Fridays and holy days, and small delegations have been allowed to leave the country to take part in the hajj. Muslim leaders, the muftis, have apparently worked out a kind of modus vivendi with the government; in exchange for being allowed to practice their religion they often support the government on major policy questions. Any kind of Islamic resistance to the Soviet system would probably emerge from a large network of Sufi brotherhoods, ultraconservative secret societies that are banned by Soviet law. Sufi adherents worship in clandestine mosques and practice a kind of "parallel Islam...
...young man, Muhammad was exposed to the currents of religious debate then swirling through the Middle East. He would listen avidly as Jews and Christians argued over their faiths. Those discussions may have fed his dissatisfaction with the traditional polytheistic religion of the Arabs, who believed in a panoply of tribal gods and jinn, headed by a deity known as Allah, Says Muhammad's French biographer, Maxime Rodinson: "Both Jews and Christians despised the Arabs, regarding them as savages who did not even possess an organized church...
...military conquest. On the "Marvels of the East" (as the Orient was known in the Middle Ages) a fantastic edifice was constructed, invested heavily with Western fear, desire, dreams of power and, of course, a very partial knowledge. And placed in this structure has been "Islam," a great religion and a culture certainly, but also an Occidental myth, part of what Disraeli once called "the great Asiatic mystery...
...represented for Europe by Muhammad and his followers, Islam appeared out of Arabia in the 7th century and rapidly spread in all directions. For almost a millennium Christian Europe felt itself challenged (as indeed it was) by this last monotheistic religion, which claimed to complete its two predecessors. Perplexingly grand and "Oriental," incorporating elements of Judeo-Christianity, Islam never fully submitted to the West's power. Its various states and empires always provided the West with formidable political and cultural contestants-and with opportunities to affirm a "superior" Occidental identity. Thus, for the West, to understand Islam has meant...