Word: sheikh
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...thousands of dollars - for all seven seats up for grabs on the Riyadh city council. They were better organized, emphasizing their technocratic skills while having the word spread via sms cell-phone messages and popular Islamic Internet sites. And they had the key backing of militant Islamic leaders, notably Sheikh Salman al Awdah, jailed for five years in the mid-'90s for opposing the Saudi monarchy. "They will make the country more conservative, while we want it to open up," says Mohammed Al Ammari, one of the defeated liberal candidates. "We have to open our minds and be part...
...candidate boldly proposed legalizing movie theaters and giving women the right to drive cars, earning him a torrent of warnings about Judgment Day from Islamist hardliners. Conservative candidates stressed their credentials as technocrats, but energized supporters with appeals on Islamist websites and open backing from Islamist diehards like Sheikh Salman al Awdah, a onetime Bin Laden ally who argues ?there is no place for secularism in the Muslim world...
...Sharm el-Sheikh talks were really just talks-about-talks, discussions about preconditions for resuming dialogue. Still, even on the question of prisoner-releases, the fault lines are already clear: Israel has offered to help cement Abbas?s stature by releasing some 900 Palestinians imprisoned for lesser offenses, but it steadfastly refuses to free any prisoner ?with blood on his hands.? But it is precisely those prisoners the Palestinians want freed in exchange for a cease-fire, starting with the 237 whose acts of violence were committed before the 1993 Oslo Accords when the PLO ostensibly ended hostilities with Israel...
...Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will help open a fresh chapter in the long search for Middle East peace this week when he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. But as usual, internal Palestinian politics played a key role in getting him there. Abbas agreed to go to Sharm el-Sheikh because he wants to show that he has Egypt's support in his effort to rein in the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Shaken by Hamas' overwhelming victory in last month's municipal elections in the Gaza Strip...
Many in Fatah aren't happy about Abbas' trip to Sharm el-Sheikh, fearing it might actually hurt him in his fight against Hamas. "You need to put your own house in order first," says a Fatah chief. To do that, Abbas must deal with Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who refuses to cleanse the Cabinet of Yasser Arafat's cronies and opposes Abbas' pick for Interior Minister. Referring to the upcoming talks, Qurei told an aide last week, "I expect another Aqaba failure," likening the summit to one held in Jordan...