Word: tribalized
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...Khazars chose Judaism, an odd historical fact that Koestler and others are at pains to explain satisfactorily. According to one ancient Jewish legend, the Khazar king, Bulan, was in the market for a monotheism to replace his old tribal idolatry. He asked the emissary from Christian Byzantium which faith he would choose if the only option was between Judaism and Islam. The Christian chose Judaism because the Jews -though sinners-at least worshiped the same...
...transition to black rule. Still in the drafting stage, the scheme might seek to commit Britain, other members of the Common Market, the U.S. and states neighboring on Rhodesia legally, financially and even militarily to guarantee a bloodless solution to the Rhodesian problem. Rhodesia's whites and black tribal minorities might be offered a "safety net" composed of a floor price for their farm land, safeguards for their pensions and financial assistance if they emigrate...
...Soldiers in Viet Nam collected enemy ears, just as Huguenots wore strings of priests' ears.) Perhaps a quality of holy war was involved, but there were crucial differences. The Americans who fought in Viet Nam did so chiefly out of a residual social discipline, not a religious or tribal loyalty, and that discipline eventually all but broke down, hastening the end of the American involvement. Besides, ideological conflict is susceptible to detente, and there is something in the nature of religious war that is deeply intolerant of accommodation. The combination of Communism and nationalism is, of course, a powerful...
There are some satisfactory reasons for going to war. Self-defense - and even survival - are the most compelling. But religion, with its ancient, emotional connotations, shows up in these wars like a tribal ghost of Hamlet's father, urging revenge. Religion, especially when it blends with the secular religion of nationalism, fetches back to timeless grievances and can find in them that nasty, righteous "Gott mil Uns" that wants no truck with the enterprise of peace - which in this world is always temporal and temporary...
...film shows a healthy, handsome and cheerful people organized as a matrilineal society under tribal chiefs, or "Gran Men." Their laws and customs date back to a precolonial Africa uninfluenced by European rulers. In one scene, a group of pallbearers carries a coffin from door to door so that the obeah, or medicine man, can ask if someone in the house was involved in the death. "Death is rarely considered natural," Actor James Earl Jones says as narrator of the film, "and certain people are divined to be responsible." If the coffin tilts toward a particular house during the ritual...