Word: sunni
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Meanwhile, Ecevit's government is still grappling with an outbreak of violence that has claimed more than 1,500 lives in the past 18 months. The worst incident occurred in December, when 111 people were killed in a sectarian clash between the generally right-wing Sunni Muslims and the often left-leaning Shi'ite Muslims. An ardent civil libertarian, Ecevit reluctantly imposed martial law in 13 of Turkey's 67 provinces. Martial law was later extended to six eastern provinces to head off potential Kurdish unrest stimulated by the revolution in Iran...
Iraq. The revolution in Iran has been a cause for some concern in the ruling Baath Party; its leadership is Sunni, while 52% of Iraq's 12 million people are Shi'ites. As in Iran, the mullahs have a tradition of political activism, and there have been violent clashes between religious dissidents and the regime's 125,000-man all-Sunni "popular army." Although government corruption and mismanagement of oil wealth are not major issues, General Saddam Hussein runs a tough police state: dissent is ruthlessly suppressed and Iraqi jails are said to hold thousands of political prisoners. The government...
Turkey. Islam is still a potent force in secular Turkey, and religious violence between the dominant Sunni Muslims and the Alevis, a Shi'ite sect, has recently injected a dangerous new element into the country's chronic political instability. Ancient rivalries between the two groups are being exploited by both right-and left-wing extremists. Last December Sunni gangs massacred a hundred Alevis in the southern Turkish town of Maras. But unlike the Shah's Iran, Turkey has a functioning democratic system, and no single issue or popular figure unites the opposition. The government is fearful, however, that "political opportunists...
...Muslims accept the Koran as God's eternal word, but Islam to some extent is a house divided, although its divisions are not as extensive as those in Christianity. About 90% of all Muslims are Sunnis (from sunna, "the tradition of the Prophet"), who consider themselves Islam's orthodoxy. In Iran and Iraq, the majority of Muslims are Shi'ites ("partisans" of 'Ali), who differ from the Sunnis in some of their interpretations of the Shari'a and in their understanding of Muhammad's succession. The Prophet left no generally recognized instructions...
...Both Sunni and Shi'ite Islam include Sufism, a mystical movement whose adherents seek to serve God not simply through obedience to the law but by striving for union with him through meditation and ritual. Sufism is considered suspect by fundamentalist Muslims like the puritanical Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, because it allows for the veneration of awliya-roughly the equivalent of Christianity's saints. Islam also has spawned a number of heretical offshoots. One is the Alawi sect, a Shi'ite minority group to which most of Syria's leaders belong. The Alawis believe...