Word: sheiking
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...Mahdi Army loyalists and government forces from the Ministry of the Interior. For their part, al-Sadr's allies downplay the specter of an Iraq broken forever along sectarian divides. "It is natural for the Sunni families to leave their homes in places with a Shi'ite majority," said Sheik Salem Fariji, an official in Najaf with al-Sadr's office, which runs housing programs for Shi'ites. "This is not just because of the Mahdi Army but out of fear of reprisals from Shi'ites who've had relatives killed in other violent areas...
...Lebanon to fight alongside Hizballah against the Israeli military" during this summer's monthlong war. In exchange, Hizballah's leadership "has made arrangements" for governments like Iran's and Syria's to contribute arms and supplies to the ICU. And senior leaders within the ICU, including co-leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, allegedly have direct ties to al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a radical group suspected of links to al-Qaeda...
Leaders of the ICU deny such allegations, but it's telling that they don't seem particularly bothered by them. "We believe the war against terrorism is a war against Islam," says the hard-line ICU national security chairman, Sheik Yusuf Indahaadde. "Those who are making trouble are not based here." Then, in English, the sheik adds forcefully, "Bush is the mother and father of terrorism...
Well, not quite. The Islamists have instituted Taliban-style rules banning drinking, cinemas, dancing and women swimming, as well as curbing the press. Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the ICU's co-leader, insists these restraints are the product of spontaneous acts of piety by the public. "We don't have any rules issuing from the Islamic Courts to stop any of this," he insists. "The people are doing this by themselves without intervention by us." That seems open to dispute. Just last week, after protests erupted over the shortage of khat, the seemingly ubiquitous narcotic chewed in Somalia, the Islamists...
...said he thought her reform measures were "total crap." It was bad enough that Murtha's candidacy turned the cable-news networks into a film festival of the grainy tapes from the Abscam sting in 1980, in which the Pennsylvania Congressman told an agent posing as an Arab sheik that he couldn't be bribed "at this point." But on ethics reforms or any other tough issues that lawmakers like to publicly support and privately fight, Pelosi might now lack the backroom clout needed to get results. "When key votes like the budget come around, this will make...