Word: arabize
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...vision of worldwide jihad is one that al-Zawahiri has imparted steadily to bin Laden since 1985, when they first worked together on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Back then, bin Laden, the scion of a rich Saudi family, was helping finance Arab volunteers in the Afghan war. Al-Zawahiri was working in field hospitals treating Afghan and Arab fighters. He was also, however, already the effective head of Al Jihad, the secretive Egyptian terrorist group bent on overthrowing the government of Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak. And al-Zawahiri was becoming further convinced that establishing Islamic rule throughout...
...following the calamity of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, which discredited secular nationalism throughout the Arab world, many younger Arabs turned to Islamic fundamentalism. Al-Zawahiri was one. By 1979, when Egypt signed the Camp David accords with Israel, al-Zawahiri had embraced Al Jihad, a violent and highly secretive organization dedicated to establishing Islamic rule in Egypt and across the Arab world. Adopting a strict and belligerent brand of Islam, al-Zawahiri steeped himself in the absolutist beliefs of Sayyid Qutb, who was executed in 1966 for plotting against Nasser's government. Qutb's book Signposts Along the Road...
...Afghanistan collapsed into factional fighting following the Soviet defeat in 1989, al-Zawahiri ushered back to Egypt many of the Arab veterans of the war. There they became Al Jihad operatives, dedicated to Mubarak's overthrow. Meanwhile, al-Zawahiri and bin Laden relocated to Sudan. Most of the missions that al-Zawahiri launched into Egypt, including separate attempts to assassinate the Prime Minister and a former Interior Minister, ended in failure. The successful bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan was the demented high point of the campaign. Mubarak's security forces responded with a ferocious crackdown in which hundreds...
Though turbans and veils are associated with Muslims--at least in the West--they actually have little to do with Islam, and lots to do with cultural or tribal mores, says Jean Abinader, managing director of the Arab American Institute. "The veil is not required in Islam," he says, although dressing modestly is. It is local interpretation that dictates that women not be seen. Turbans also reflect local culture (except in the case of Sikhs), or often geography. Says Abinader: "Different turbans are outgrowths of the different climates in which they are worn...
...U.S.air power. That's certainly a plausible defensive strategy in light of the strength of the forces ranged against them, but some correspondents close to the action have described a chaotic collapse, in which many Taliban commanders and troops simply fled their positions, leaving the more ideologically-motivated Pakistani, Arab and Chechen volunteers to fight and die - some of them reportedly after surrendering. Indeed, Western audiences may wince a little as firsthand tales from the battle front paint many of the proxy warriors of the Northern Alliance as no less brutal than their Talib enemies. But in Afghanistan, neither locals...