Word: sunni
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...assassination attempt comes amid rising tensions in the poverty-stricken country. On Monday, Sunni Muslim extremists killed 14 people in an attack on a Shi'ite mosque. And with Nawaz the target of fierce criticims from groups as diverse as supporters of Osama Bin Laden and the country's Christian minority alarmed at the government's adoption of Islamic law, Pakistan is starting to look like a time bomb--attached to the side of a nuclear device...
More than 70 anti-Saddam grouplets sit around plotting in coffee shops from London to Amman. They cover every shade of opinion and ethnic coloration, including Islamists with Shi'ite and Sunni subdivisions, Kurd separatists, Arab nationalists, communists and liberal democrats. Their only common goal is to depose Saddam, but after that come conflicting agendas. The most robust of the groups, at least in p.r. terms, is Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The I.N.C. once united nearly two-dozen factions and earned support from Washington, but it has fallen on hard times. Internal feuds and well-publicized failures have melted...
...Afghan militia denies the incident even occurred. But the reported clash may be part of a strategy by Iranian hard-liners to undermine their moderate president. "This clash is part of a struggle for dominance in the Islamic world," says TIME correspondent Johanna McGeary. Shiite Iran wants the Sunni Taliban to hand over members who murdered eight Iranian diplomats earlier this year. It also accuses the Taliban of killing Shiite civilians inside Afghanistan, and has massed 200,000 troops on the border to underscore...
Nawaz Sharif may hold moderate views, but human rights activists fear the imposition of Shari'a may unleash an army of zealots. Minorities are worried too. Nearly 15% of Pakistan's Muslims are Shi'ite, and in several cities their mosques and schools have been attacked by Sunni extremists. Last week, after the murder in Islamabad of a Sunni extremist leader and three companions, his followers retaliated by burning down a mosque and several homes belonging to Shi'ites...
Iran and Afghanistan, two of the most profoundly fundamentalist Muslim countries, sit side by side, but common faith doesn't make them friendly. In fact, each despises the other's brand of Islam. Now Iran's Shi'ite leaders and the Sunni Taliban militia that has nearly succeeded in imposing its rule over most of Afghanistan are threatening to turn an ancient theological schism into a fighting...