Word: shrines
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...centuries-old mud brick shrine of Abu Feisal, more than a hundred men push into the tiny prayer room. Outside, the temperature is below freezing, but inside the air is thick and pungent with the heavy scent of perspiration. A small microphone is turned on, and a middle-aged man with a face creased with grief began chanting a mournful dirge. The penitents, sitting in rough circles, begin to pound their chests in a powerful rhythm amplified by a hundred chest cavities. Deep and as resonant as a heartbeat, the sound gradually changes tenor as thin cotton shirts split with...
...last day of Ashura is marked by the spilling of blood. This time, the flails are tipped with razor-sharp blades the shape of elongated hearts. This time, it's public. The penitents march through the streets in orderly rows and pause in front of the shrine. Again the mournful chanting, and the whipping begins, blades flashing in the sun. The air is thick with the metallic edge of fresh blood. It is as much a public spectacle as a demonstration of faith. "Everyone who watches is mourning for Hussein as well," says Ali Hosseini, an 18-year...
...northwest Indian state. Sikhs, who make up 2% of the Indian population but form a majority in Punjab, have long wanted greater autonomy from the central government in New Delhi. But even before the Indian army's bloody 1984 invasion of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhdom's holiest shrine, an extremist minority had agitated violently for the creation of an independent state. Shortly after the temple assault, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Rajiv's mother, was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards...
...kidnapping rings and death squads. Maliki immediately called for Saedi's release, and the U.S. military complied. Killings were on the rise, and Maliki was working to help the leading murderers; Sadr's Mahdi Army dropped virtually all pretenses of restraint after the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra and went on the attack...
...happy, popular teenager and a standout on his high school football team. In 1931 he enrolled at the University of Michigan on a full athletic scholarship. He majored in economics, played center on the Big Ten varsity squad and during his senior year was chosen to participate in the Shrine College All-Star game...