Word: shiing
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...early as 2004, Jordan's King Abdullah warned of a rising Shi'ite "crescent" running from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Although the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad had the backing of the U.S., in many Arab eyes it represented the expansion of Iran's influence. Sunni Arab leaders have begun to ratchet up their rhetoric against Shi'ites in general and Iran in particular. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2006 said, "Most of the Shi'ites are loyal to Iran and not to the countries they are living in." After a storm of protest from Iraq...
...Wahhabi sect, often backed and bankrolled by members of the Saudi royal family, contribute to the spread of sectarian violence by preaching a hard-line form of Sunni Islam that condemns all other strains as heresy. In Pakistan, moderate Muslims blame Wahhabi madrasahs as well as Iranian-funded Shi'ite seminaries for the escalation of Sunni-Shi'ite violence that has claimed more than 4,000 lives in the past two decades. In the latest attacks, three separate suicide bombings killed 21 during the Ashura rituals in January. In Lebanon, sectarian tensions have risen after years of relative calm. Hizballah...
...help, they will find [Iran] at their gate," says Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars. "For the sake of the entire Muslim community worldwide, the beast has to be destroyed in Iraq." For leaders of terrorist groups, the fear of a regionwide Shi'ite ascendancy serves as a useful fund-raising tool as well as recruiting propaganda. Radical Sunni preachers and TV talk-show hosts across the Arab world are inflaming sentiments by accusing Iraq's "Persians" of ethnic cleansing. In January, an editorial in al-Ahram, a newspaper widely seen as the voice...
...next generation. With thousands being killed on either side, the nationalist, secular slogans that were long taught in Iraq's schools have lost much of their meaning. And children do not get too many lessons in secularism at home. "When we were kids, my parents taught us that Shi'ites had the wrong idea about Islam but were just misguided, not bad people," says Ayesha Ubaid, 26, a Sunni doctor's assistant whose late husband was a Shi'ite. "But now I hear my brothers and sisters-in-law telling their children, 'Those people killed our uncle and two cousins...
Ubaid lives with three brothers and their families. In November, they all moved to Adhamiya from Shulla, a mostly Shi'ite neighborhood where she was born. "I knew every brick of every house on my street," she says. "When we left, some of our neighbors cried and promised they would protect our house with their lives. But the next day, a Shi'ite family took the place, and nobody stopped them." Ubaid says she had considered raising Mohammed as a Shi'ite, out of respect for her husband. But now, she says, "that would be inviting disaster." Still, Ubaid says...