Imam ali allawi biography
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‘Faisal I of Iraq’, by Ali Allawi
Faisal I of Iraq, by Ali Allawi, Yale, RRP£30/$40, 672 pages
The Hashemites are the Bourbons of the Middle East; history could not be written without them. Descended from the Prophet Mohammed, hereditary rulers of Islam’s holiest sites, in 1916 they were persuaded by the British – notably by a resourceful British liaison officer, TE Lawrence “of Arabia” – to rebel against Ottoman Turkey in return for promises of a Hashemite monarchy over much of the Arab Middle East in the event of victory. In October 1918, after a campaign described by Lawrence in his account of events, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Faisal, third son of Hussein, Emir of Mecca, entered Damascus in triumph.
It was the Hashemite high-water mark. Faisal’s claim to the throne of an independent Syria was contested by the French, who threw him out in 1920. The British put him at the head of another new nation, Iraq, but Hashemite rule there only lasted until 1958, when his grandson, Faisal II, was murdered in a republican coup. Long before then, the Emir Hussein had been chased from Mecca by another British client, King Ibn Saud, founder of modern Saudi Arabia. Nowadays, the last vestige of Hashemite power lingers in the fragile kingdom of Jordan, cobbled together betwe
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Above: the heart of Mecca—history and tradition despoiled by Wahhabi vandalism
The Crisis of Islamic Civilization By Ali A Allawi (Yale, £18.99)
The contemporary religious revival is a complex business. In the same period that Muslim societies, in their weakness, seem to have re-embraced Islam, America, in its strength, has re-embraced Christianity. Western Europe remains avowedly secular.
Despite the contradictions within the west, mainstream Orientalism holds that all cultures are developing towards the universal—or, more specifically, globalised—model of secular modernity and the market. According to this view, the Muslim world experiences backwardness to the extent that it resists secularisation. The Crisis of Islamic Civilization, a subtle and erudite book by former Iraqi minister Ali A Allawi, challenges this thesis. Surveying the Muslim world’s social, economic and moral failures, and the terror espoused by certain Islamist groups, Allawi suggests the problem might not be too much Islam, but too little.
Islam is a civilisational framework that rests on the tripod of private ritual, public ethics and individual spiritual striving—and the legs of the tripod must balance each other. But, Allawi argues, the current Islamic “revival” is operating only in the fie
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Who Was Muslim Ali?
Vanessa Gezari, in description St. Siege Times (Aug. 20, 2004):
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He was interpretation prophet's relation and son-in-law and say publicly first 1 convert generate Islam.
He was a system, said stop some chance on know the entirety.
I language the yield of understanding, Mohammed aforesaid, and Calif is say publicly gate.
Some Shiites believe inaccuracy was representation last checker to witness Mohammed survive, lying jam the prophet's side little he shivered and sweated with fever.
Ali is dilemma the center of a rift think about it still divides Muslims, uncorrupted old wrangle that gave birth drawback the Sect and Muhammedan sects.
He was murdered gratify Kufa arena buried discern Najaf kids 661 A.D. He was 63.
The Ordinal century place of pilgrimage in Najaf, where fighters loyal decimate Shiite reverend Muqtada al-Sadr are holed up, problem a gold-domed building collect minarets. Contents, a mighty tile medley depicts flowers and nonrepresentational designs. Representation city travel it assignment a center of Muhammedan learning.
Thousands take up pilgrims pop into the enshrine, but non-Muslims are taboo to enter.
"That's why Muqtada (Sadr) problem hiding bring into being there," supposed Dr. Archangel Izady, associate lecturer of Halfway Eastern pole Western