Word: sunni
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Angry Shi'ite mourners punch the air with their fists and chant vows of revenge as the coffin of Ahmad Mahmoud passes by, draped in the Lebanese national flag and sprinkled with rose petals. Shot dead Sunday evening during street fighting between Sunni and Shi'ite youths, the 20-year-old Mahmoud is being lionized by the Hizballah-led opposition as the first "martyr" of its protest campaign to topple the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. But some Lebanese fear that Mahmoud may be remembered as the first casualty of a new civil...
...Mahmoud's death has ignited long-simmering tensions between Shi'ite and Sunni communities, which have even begun to eclipse Lebanon's more familiar Christian-Muslim divide and instead parallels the sectarian schism throughout the Middle East that has been reopened by the conflict in Iraq...
...very different sentiment is aired nearby in the mainly Sunni district of Tarek Jdeide, where a group of laughing young men chant crude insults at Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah's charismatic leader. "If the Shi'ites topple the government, Hizballah will take power and we will have a Shi'ite state, but we won't let that happen," says Yussef Beydoun, 21. "Tarek Jdeide will continue to be a citadel of resilience against the Shi'ites...
...ites, a traditionally neglected and impoversished segment of Lebanese society, are generally thought to represent the largest of Lebanon's 18 sects, though a recent survey of eligible voters put their numbers at about the same as the Sunni population, at around 30% each. Census figures, however, are unreliable and potentially explosive in a country where top positions are apportioned according to sect, which explains why there has been no official survey of the Lebanese population since...
...Like other Shi'ite politicians - including Prime Minister al-Maliki - al-Hakim believes the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces should be expending their entire resources and energies in crushing the Sunni insurgency. That will likely be his message to President Bush...