Word: sects
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...towns that are not surrounded. But then so are the people of Aley and Ain Zhalta and other Druze towns, all prisoners of collective folk memories in which rights and wrongs are forever remembered. "We are the first people of Lebanon," says a Druze village elder, referring to his sect, which broke away from Islam in the 11th century (see box). "We cannot be ignored. We respect the rights of others, but they must respect our rights...
...gather in remote valleys and mountain strongholds, and only a handful of initiates are permitted to know their mystic rites or to read their "Six Books of Wisdom." Their faith is a baffling hybrid of Greek philosophy and Muslim mysticism; they revere Jesus, Moses and Muhammad equally. Though their sect is technically an offshoot of the Isma'ili Muslim sect, it shares ideas with Chinese and Indian religions. Such are the shadowy outlines of the mysterious Druze, a self-enclosed feudal group famous for its autonomy and military prowess...
Accustomed to being a minority sect, the Druze have always clung to habits of secrecy. But some aspects of their doctrine are publicly known: affirming "the essential unity of all things and beings," the Druze hold that God is a single entity and that men pass through a series of lives, constantly moving toward perfection. They also believe that only a fixed number of places are reserved for them in paradise. Upon death, therefore, every worthy Druze is said to be reborn as another Druze; for the same reason, converts are not accepted and intermarriage is not encouraged. The Druze...
...Then his 1979 Slow Train Coming album suggested that he had become a born-afresh Christian. The latest reported twist in his spiritual quest was the news that Bob Dylan, 42, has decided to spend time studying with and cut an album of songs for a strictly orthodox Jewish sect, the Lubavitch Hasidim, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Last week Dylan was spotted at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall for his son's bar mitzvah, wearing a yarmulke and phylacteries (the two leather boxes containing scriptural passages worn by men on the left arm and forehead). Dylan from time to time...
There was never much doubt that the Chouf, heartland of Lebanon's 250,000 Druze, who are members of a breakaway Islamic sect, would fall under control of the Druze militia, although the mountains are specked with Christian as well as Druze villages (see following story). The Druze militia has 30,000 fighters and, if pressed, could field thousands of irregulars. The Lebanese Forces, a Christian militia dominated by the Phalangists, have an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 fighters in the Chouf. This number could also be considerably increased, though at the moment many Christian families are sending...