Word: sunniness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...lights never went out, and the rumored orgy failed to materialize. Still, from the point of view Turkey's Sunni Muslim authorities, a hundred other heresies were committed on a recent evening at the Alevi Muslim prayer service in Istanbul's working-class Okmeydani neighborhood. Most noticeable were the girls without headscarves, flirting with boys in the open entrance hall. Then there was the laxity: With no call to prayer ringing from loudspeakers, worshipers straggled in late, while one of the religious leaders joked about having to compete with TV sitcoms. When the service did start, it was far from...
...series of bombings rocked predominantly Sunni areas of Baghdad over the weekend, threatening to draw al-Qaeda back into the capital's spotlight, just as Iraqi and American military commanders announced limited progress made on another fiery front line. For the last month, the attention of the Iraqi and American militaries shifted in large part from Sunni insurgents to the Shi'ite Mahdi Army. With daily car bombings and IEDs still lower in Sunni areas of the capital than they were a year ago, officials are hesitant to declare a return of al-Qaeda just yet. But with all eyes...
...some observers fear Sunni insurgents allied with al-Qaeda may seek to capitalize on the situation by wreaking havoc in other neighborhoods where U.S. and Iraqi forces are paying less attention. Last month, American troops found a letter in a farmhouse northwest of Baghdad, purportedly signed by an al-Qaeda operative, which called on insurgents to sow disunity among the nation's Sunni fighters who have begun working with the Americans...
This weekend's bombings may be the latest evidence of that effort. In the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amhariya in north Baghdad, where Sunni Awakening groups allied with the U.S. have fought and largely quelled the presence of al-Qaeda over the past year, a suicide bomber blast tore through a meeting of the Awakening leadership Saturday night, injuring Abu al-Abed, the local head of the movement, residents said...
...This is, I think, an important time," said Rice, who credited al-Maliki's confrontation with al-Sadr's Shi'ite militia with shoring up government support among Iraq's Kurds and Sunnis. "You've seen a coalescing of a center in Iraqi politics." Maliki, also a Shi'ite, had drawn criticism in the past by Sunni factions in particular for failing to crack down on the Mahdi Army, which is blamed for much of the sectarian violence in Iraq...