Word: scholarly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...command: up to 8,000 fighters. He is thought to be in charge of recruiting and training suicide bombers. Azmatullah's claim may rest on his being the most closely related to Baitullah: they both come from the same branch of the Mehsud tribe. As a maulana, or Islamic scholar, he may have the best religious credentials of the three. Wali-ur-Rehman, long Baitullah's spokesman, is thought to have been his most trusted lieutenant. Said to have strong ties to many clans and tribes, he may be the least divisive figure of the three...
...failure of the regime to quiet the streets and to close ranks behind Khamenei in his endorsement of a second Ahmadinejad term is without precedent in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history. As leading U.S.-based Iran scholar Farideh Farhi told the Council on Foreign Relations, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad had assumed that "if they use a sufficient amount of violence, they can put an end to the popular anger that has been generated. [Instead], they continue to be surprised by the resistance that is being shown - not only by major players in Iranian politics, but the people of Iran...
...breed of young Muslim activists, most of them educated and from the middle class, have aggressively embraced a stricter version of Islam, rejecting anything Western and Christian. Boko Haram began life as a peaceful group focused on the study of the Koran, according to Abdulmumin Sa'ad, a Muslim scholar and professor of sociology at the University of Maiduguri. "The idea was that there is a lot of sin in the larger society and their parents had amassed a lot of ill-gotten wealth," says Sa'ad, who taught some of the militants. "There is widespread immorality...
...medieval scholar named Mahmud Kashgari - from, as his name suggests, the Silk Road outpost of Kashgar - presented a landmark text to the Caliph of Baghdad. It was the first ever compendium of the Turkish language, the babble of tongues spoken by nomadic tribes who roamed between the shores of the Caspian Sea and the wastes of Siberia. Despite the scope of his work, Kashgari was proudest of his hometown, boasting that the Turkic dialect there was the "purest" and "most elegant" of them...
...Turkey - now the home of the scholar Kashgari's original manuscript - the Uighurs' plight strikes an emotional chord. And for most outsiders, dusty, remote Kashgar still holds a powerful romantic mystique. Enduring beside billowing sands and beneath glacial peaks, it has charmed and thrilled travelers from Marco Polo to the modern backpacker clutching a Lonely Planet guide. Its knife smiths and livestock bazaars drip with exoticism, exuding a living history at the edge of the world. But as Chinese authorities begin to smash Kashgar's ancient heart, its fabled allure may end up as just that - a fable...