Word: sects
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...teamed up with American forces to clear their regions of extremists, or at least put them on the run, reaping a windfall of American aid money in the process. What has surprised military officials about the groups around Musayyib, though, is that they are Shi'ite or of mixed sect, containing both Sunnis and Shi'ite residents who rejected the excesses of the Jaish al Mahdi, the Shi'ite militia nominally loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr. Almost 500 Shi'ites and at least as many Sunnis have already signed on. Shi'ite communities in the capital...
While the real key to stability in the region is training and fielding Iraqi police and army forces loyal to the central government instead of their particular tribe or sect, officers say the concerned citizen militias create a surge effect, picking up some of the slack and creating a pipeline for new and better qualified recruits...
Jurors debated for 16 hours. In the end, the testimony of a young woman who at 14 had been "placed" in an arranged marriage to her cousin by Warren Jeffs, 51, leader of a polygamist sect, secured Jeffs' conviction. He now faces life in prison as an accomplice to rape for directing the girl to submit to her husband, who was charged with rape the day after Jeffs was found guilty...
...that is a 50-50 split between old Mormon residents and newcomers with more liberal politics and lifestyles - a split echoed in the makeup of the eight-person jury - it was a gamble for both sides. Would Mormons harbor secret sympathy for polygamists, or come down harder on the sect? Would newcomers be horrified by the child marriages, or see the prosecution as religious persecution? After two and a half days of deliberation and the replacement of one juror, they found that Jeffs did "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly solicit, request, command or encourage" a 19-year-old follower to rape...
...because he tended to arrange marriages of young girls--inspiring more mainstream-minded pluralists of the Big Love school to charge that he was giving the practice a bad name. At the same time, prosecutors were looking for a way to address growing rumors of abuses within the sect, and they turned to newly strengthened child-abuse and sexual-predator laws. In 2005, Jeffs was indicted for sex crimes in Arizona and Utah and became a fugitive. A year later, he was on the FBI's 10-most-wanted list until his arrest in August 2006 in Las Vegas. Police...