Muslim

Front 1

Anwar Sadat

Back 1

- President of Egypt from 1970 to 1981, Sadat plotted to retake the Egyptian Siani if the Israelis continued to refuse the Egyptian peace initiative. On 6 October 1973, Sadat struck. With exceptional military precision, the Egyptian army crossed the Suez back into the Sinai and began driving the Israeli army into the desert. Though short-lived, the attack created a new momentum for peace both in Egypt and in Israel. These pressures coincided with continued domestic problems in Egypt.

Front 2

King Husayn

Back 2

Sharif of the Hashimite line, Ottoman-appointed emir of Mecca (1908–16), and self-proclaimed king of the Arabs (1916–24). His claim to be the new caliph (1924) led to a short and unsuccessful war against Ibn Sa'ud. Husayn was exiled to Cyprus. One of his sons, 'Abdullah, became king of Transjordan (present-day Jordan); another became king of Syria and later Iraq as Faysal I

Front 3

Muhammad Khatami

Back 3

Iranian religious and political leader. From a prominent clerical family, Khatami opposed the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi in the 1960s and 70s, and in 1978 he headed the Islamic Center in Hamburg, Germany. After the shah's fall (1979), he returned to Iran and was elected to the national assembly, becoming minister of culture and Islamic guidance (1982-92). Considered a moderate, he eased restrictions on publications, films, art, and music and was ultimately forced to resign after being charged with permissiveness. Khatami subsequently served as director of the National Library and a presidential adviser. Pledging to deal with runaway inflation and high unemployment, he was overwhelmingly elected Iran's president in 1997 with strong support from political moderates, intellectuals, students, and women. As president, he appointed a relatively liberal cabinet and called for political democratization and the advancement of women. He also advocated rapprochement between Iran and Arab states as well as improved relations with the West, including the United States.

Front 4

Jamal Abd al-Nasir

Back 4

- Egyptian army officer who was prime minister (1954–56) and president (1956–70) of Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate him but failed. In 1956 he promulgated a constitution that made Egypt a one-party socialist state with himself as president. In the same year, he nationalized the Suez Canal (see Suez Crisis) and secured Soviet assistance to build the Aswan High Dam after the U.S. and Britain canceled their offer of aid. Soon thereafter, Egypt weathered an attack by British, French, and Israeli forces. A charismatic figure, he aspired to lead the Arab world and succeeded briefly in forming the United Arab Republic with Syria (1958–61). He led the Arab world in the disastrous Six-Day War against Israel but had tentatively accepted a U.S. peace plan for Egypt and Israel when he died of a heart attack. He was succeeded by Anwar el-Sadat.

Front 5

Hassan al-Banna

Back 5

founded what many scholars consider to be the first modern Islamic political organization, the Society of Muslium Brothers, in 1928. The ideology of the nrotherhod combined anti-imperialism and nationalism with a call for moral and religious reconstruction, brotherhood given responsibility for assassination of Egypt prime minister.

Front 6

Yitzak Rabin

Back 6

First native-born prime minister of Israel. He fought in the first Arab-Israeli War and became chief of staff in 1964. His strategies helped win the Six-Day War in 1967. After retiring from the army (1968), he served as ambassador to the U.S. (1968–73). As head of the Israel Labour Party, he twice served as prime minister (1974–77, 1992–95). During his first tenure, he secured a cease-fire with Syria in the Golan Heights and ordered the raid at Entebbe, Ugan. (see Entebbe raid). As defense minister (1984–90) he responded forcefully to the Palestinian first intifadah. In 1993 secret negotiations with the Palestinians yielded a political settlement that called for limited Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, for which he shared the 1994 Nobel Prize for Peace with Shimon Peres and Yasir 'Arafat. He was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist

Front 7

Muhammad Reza Shah-

Back 7

Shah of Iran (1941–79), noted for his pro-Western orientation and autocratic rule. After an education in Switzerland, he replaced his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi, as ruler when the latter was forced into exile by the British. His rule was marked by a power struggle with his premier, Mohammad Mosaddeq, who briefly succeeded in deposing him in 1953; covert intervention by British and U.S. intelligence services returned him to the throne the next year. His program of rapid modernization and oil-field development initially brought him popular support, but his autocratic style and suppression of dissent, along with corruption and the unequal distribution of Iran's new oil wealth, increased opposition led by exiled cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In 1979 Pahlavi was forced into exile.

Front 8

Ayatollah Khamenei

Back 8

Shi'ite cleric and leader of Iran (1979–89). orig. Ruhollah Musavi He received a traditional religious education and settled in Qom c. 1922, where he became a Shi'ite scholar of some repute and an outspoken opponent first of Iran's ruler, Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1926–41), and then of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941–79). Popularly recognized as a grand ayatollah in the early 1960s, he was imprisoned and then exiled (1964) for his criticism of the government. He settled first in Iraq—where he taught at the shrine city of Al-Najaf for some years—and then, in 1978, near Paris, where he continued to speak out against the shah. During that time he also refined his theory of velayat-e faqih (“government of the jurist”), in which the Shi'ite clergy—traditionally politically quiescent in Iran—would govern the state. Iranian unrest increased until the shah fled in 1979; Khomeini returned shortly thereafter and was eventually named Iran's political and religious leader (rahbar). He ruled over a system in which the clergy dominated the government, and his foreign policies were both anti-Western and anticommunist. During the first year of his leadership, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran—greatly exacerbating tensions with the U.S.—and the devastating Iran-Iraq War (1980–90) began.

Front 9

Jamal ud-Din al-Afghani

Back 9

Muslim politician and journalist. He is thought to have adopted the name Afghani to conceal the fact that he was of Persian Shi'ite origin. He lived in Afghanistan from 1866, and a year later he became counselor to the khan. Displaced after a change of rulers, he went to Istanbul and then to Cairo in 1871. After becoming known as a rabble-rouser and heretic, he was deported from Egypt in 1879. By 1883 he was in Paris, where he championed Islamic civilization in the face of European domination. In Russia (1887–89) he seems to have worked as an anti-British agitator. His next stop was Iran, from which he was deported as a heretic in 1892; four years later he avenged himself by instigating the shah's murder. He died in Istanbul after failing to interest the sultan in his pan-Islamic ideas.

Front 10

David Ben-Gurion

Back 10

First prime minister of Israel (1948–53, 1955–63).
orig. David Gruen Introduced to Zionism by his father, Ben-Gurion immigrated to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1906, hoping to fulfill the Zionist aspiration of building a Jewish state in historic Israel. Expelled by the Ottomans at the outbreak of World War I (1914–18), he traveled to New York, where he married. Following the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, he joined the British army's Jewish Legion and returned to the Middle East. In the 1920s and '30s he led several political organizations, including the Jewish Agency, world Zionism's highest directing body. As Britain became more sympathetic to the interests of the Palestinian Arabs, thereafter restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine, he called on the Jewish community to rise against Britain. However, he again called for Jews to support the Allies during World War II (1939–45), while continuing the clandestine immigration of Jews to Palestine. On the establishment of the State of Israel (1948), he became prime minister and minister of defense. He succeeded in fusing the underground Jewish militias that had fought the British into a national army, which he used successfully to defend against Arab attacks. Unpopular with Britain and the U.S., he found an ally in France—then embroiled in its own war in the Arab world—which helped arm Israel in the period leading to the Suez Crisis (1956). He retired from the premiership in 1963 and from the Knesset (parliament) in 1970. See also Arab-Israeli wars.

Front 11

Nakhba

Back 11

May 15 is the anniversary of the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, and is commemorated by Palestinians as "Al Nakba," or the catastrophe. It marks the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948 and for fifty four years thereafter. It is also a day when Palestinians renew their call for their right to self-determination and for the right of Palestinian refugees to return and restitution, as enshrined in UN Resolution 194 of 1949

Front 12

Yasir Arafat

Back 12

Palestinian leader. orig. Muhammad 'Abd al-Ra'uf al-Qudwah al-Husayni The date and place of his birth are disputed. A birth certificate registered in Cairo, Egypt, gives Aug. 24, 1929, but some sources support his claim to have been born in Jerusalem on Aug. 4, 1929. He graduated from the University of Cairo as a civil engineer and served in the Egyptian army during the 1956 Suez Crisis. That year, working as an engineer in Kuwait, he cofounded the guerrilla organization Fatah

Front 13

Fatwa

Back 13

is a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued by a religious law specialist on a specific issue. Usually a fatwa is issued at the request of an individual or a judge to settle a question where ’’fiqh,’’ Islamic jurisprudence, is unclear. A scholar capable of issuing fatāwa is known as a Mufti

Front 14

Islamic Government

Back 14

- The system of government under Islam is based upon the Quran and the Sunna or Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. As Islamic government has to suit many different times and situations, the basic rules and principles are set out in the Quran but the details are for the Muslims of a particular time or place to decide. There has always been a lot of discussion amongst Muslim scholars about the best way to implement these rules and principles.

Front 15

Rentier Theory

Back 15

- The theory of the “rentier state” says that countries that receive substantial amounts of oil revenues from the outside world on a regular basis tend to become autonomous from their societies, unaccountable to their citizens, and autocratic. The theory is used to help explain why Iran, the Gulf States, many African states ( Nigeria, Gabon) and other countries (e.g., Netherlands) with abundant resource wealth perform less well than their resource-poor counterparts. How does this happen, according to the rentier state theory? The short answer, according to Yates (1), is that a rentier state and rentier economy lead to a rentier mentality, which dooms a country’s economy and long-term prospects