Word: sunni
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...uprisings succeed, Iraq could find itself dismembered, with the Kurds running the north, the Shi'ites the south, and Saddam's Sunni faction relegated to the strip in between. That in turn might invite neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran to take a bite out of the country. Thus the Lebanonization of Iraq would become part of the unhappy legacy of foreign involvement in the Middle East, a result the West is anxious to avoid...
...playing down the threat of partition. The Joint Action Committee, an umbrella group linking 17 disparate organizations, asserted that its members were united in wanting a democratic, unified Iraq -- though many of them want no such thing. The association, which includes several Shi'ite and Kurdish groups, communists, Sunni nationalists and pro-Syrian Baathists, is riven with strife...
...years in power are a record. His Baath Party has imposed stability through control of the army and a network of secret police and informers that penetrates every niche of Iraqi society. If that is swept away, simmering tensions between the Shi'ite Muslims (55% of the population), Sunni Muslims (20%) and Kurds (25%) could conceivably erupt into a communal bloodbath, fragmenting the country into another Lebanon...
...dealings outside his borders, Assad's conduct has been equally ruthless. In 1986, for instance, pro-Syrian militiamen (using grenades and poison gas) killed more than 200 Sunni Moslem fundamentalists in Tripoli, Lebanon...
...religious authority to declare jihad? In Islam's dominant Sunni branch, that power formerly belonged to the caliph, or political successor of Muhammad, who united religious and temporal rulership. But no caliphate has existed since 1924, and Sunni jurists today believe the power rests with any legitimate Muslim political authority. Lufti Dogan, a former Turkish Religious Affairs Minister, says all Muslims can be called to jihad, but there is greater receptivity to the call in Shi'ism, the minority branch of Islam that is dominant in Iran...