Word: sheiking
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...allowed to drive, let alone vote, Saudi Arabia's top religious leader took one small step toward gender equality last week when he banned the practice of forcing women to marry against their will. Calling such coercion "un-Islamic" and "a major injustice," the kingdom's Grand Mufti, Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, proclaimed that fathers and male guardians who try to force their daughters into wedlock should be thrown in jail until the men change their minds. He made it clear that forced marriages originated as a pre-Islamic custom and are antithetical to Shari'a law, which stipulates...
...attempt to stabilize prices, delegates from OPEC's 13 member nations gathered in Vienna, where they munched pastries, quarreled with one another for three days and then jetted home last week in a huff. Their only agreement was to hold more talks on July 22 in Geneva. Oil Minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani of Saudi Arabia, which has OPEC's richest reserves of both oil and cash, has reportedly threatened that if there is no progress in Geneva, his country will double its current production of crude, which could send the price below $20 per bbl., its lowest level since...
...difficulties of effecting change in Islam is that no clerical hierarchy exists; there is only an assortment of jurists whose authority comes from the willingness of the faithful to accept their decrees. One of the most influential elders in the U.S., Khaled Abou El Fadl, a sheik and a professor of Islamic law at UCLA, told TIME that he sees no reason to keep women from leading. In his view, meritocracy ruled in Muhammad's time, and it should today. "The person who is most knowledgeable should be the one to lead prayer," he says. "Gender is irrelevant." Such words...
...Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, was so struck by the daily street protests unfolding on the streets of Beirut--full of flag-waving demonstrators demanding Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon and an end to foreign meddling in the country--that he decided to hold a party of his own. He summoned his supporters to Beirut last week for a counterdemonstration, which drew hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites and other pro-Hizballah Lebanese into the capital's Riad al-Solh Square. Addressing the crowd from a balcony above the square, Nasrallah praised Syria, denounced the U.S. and made...
Nasrallah, 44, is used to being heard. Since assuming the group's leadership after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Sheik Abbas Musawi, in 1992, Nasrallah--a bearded, bespectacled Shi'ite cleric who trained in Najaf and Qum--has used Hizballah's resources to build a vast welfare network consisting of dozens of schools, 50 clinics and four hospitals as well as various businesses and farms that employ supporters...