Word: sect
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
RAFIK HALABI is caught in the middle. He is a loyal Israeli, but not a Jew; an Arab, but not a Moslem. Halabi is a Druse, a member of a small religious sect whose members live in Israel, Syria and Lebanon. And since 1974 he has been the West Bank reporter for Israel Television. Halabi's cultural and professional credentials make him uniquely suited to provide a balanced account of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs of the West Bank. His first book, The West Bank Story, does not disappoint this expectation. In it, Halabi offers a compelling...
...term off-topic may have been coined by a condescending purist, but now the apostate sect, like up-and-coming Fauvists, revels in the name. Bill Smith, a natty, placid Harvard freshman and Kidd's teammate, suggests a continuing enmity between the offs and the ons. "Off-topic debaters," he explains, "tend to despise on-topic, because most of us were on-topic in high school. I was, for a year and a half. It's very, very intense." Burned out at 18, they seek refuge in the unruly rumble of off-topic. "Sometimes," says Sanford Cohen...
...Brotherhood does not have a large following of its own in Syria, but has been directing an increasingly fierce terrorist campaign. Religious friction continues to smolder. Although the country is predominantly Sunni Muslim, Assad's minority Alawite sect dominates the government and armed forces. Assad has also been challenged by elements in his own military, most recently in January, when some 150 officers in elite air force and armored units were arrested on charges of plotting a coup. Still, Western diplomats in the Middle East believe that Assad remains in command. There were no signs last week that...
...masterpiece, from that aspect, is James Hampton's Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millenium General Assembly. Hampton (1909-64), a janitor for the General Services Administration in Washington, started his own sect, of which he was the only member. The Throne was his life's work. It occupied him for 15 years, and it was still unfinished, locked in a rented garage, at his death. It was provoked by visions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and Adam. They inspired him to raise a monument, not to a past event but to a future...
Known to outsiders for their persistent door-to-door proselytizing, Jehovah's Witnesses exist within what Franz calls a "hermetically sealed" community; every doctrinal blip or scintilla of sin is closely monitored. Nowhere is this more true than at Bethel, the sect's Brooklyn headquarters. By Franz's account, reading or studying of the Bible is considered "evil" unless conducted in authorized discussions following Watch Tower doctrinal guides, lest staffers veer into error...