Islam

Peace has finally come to this city and most of Afghanistan, and with it the order that people longed for during the long, nightmare years of civil war. But there has been a price, unbearably high for some. "Now I can walk out onto the street and feel safe," said Ismail, 21, an office worker for the International Committee of the Red Cross who is the sole source of support for an eight-member family. He pointed to his worn, Western-style trousers. "But if I go out in these, I might be beaten."

The Taliban militia, now the uncontested masters of Afghanistan's capital, chased the soldiers of ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani north of Kabul on Friday and began putting in effect its version of strict Islamic rule. Women were barred from offices until further notice and told to wear traditional Islamic veils when outside the home, reports reaching this city near the Afghan-Pakistan border said.

In a gesture that would be unthinkable--even suicidal--for an Arab leader today, President Habib Bourguiba went on live television almost 30 years ago in the midst of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims, and drank a full glass of water before the eyes of a shocked nation. Bourguiba had already stunned orthodox Muslims in the mid-1950s by becoming the first Arab leader to abolish polygamy, promote women's rights, introduce birth control and establish mass education.

In 1979, a young mullah with a stylishly trimmed black beard helped Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini escape the millions who had assembled in Tehran to welcome him home from 15 years in exile. After a helicopter dash to a hospital parking lot, the cleric packed Khomeini into his old Volkswagen Beetle and rushed him to a relative's home through the city's labyrinthine back streets. The day marked the climax of Iran's Islamic revolution. It also symbolized the emergence of Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri.

Sixteen years after its tumultuous revolution, Iran is in transition. To just what, however, is unclear. On one front, many of the revolution's early images--from reverent theologians and chador-clad women to gun-toting zealots--are fast fading. Last month, theology students protested the lack of experienced instructors and quality books--and demanded the seminary director be fired. "A revolution within a revolution," a Tehran journalist remarked.

As far as Makhbube Ashurova is concerned, it was emancipation that sent her mother to an early grave. The 20-year-old teaching student recalls a woman who rose before the sun to prepare the day's bread for her husband and seven children, then tended a courtyard garden before setting off for the factory to do her part in the Soviet drive for industrial prowess. At night, Ashurova recalls, her mother cooked, fed the children, then served her husband, his parents and his friends.

In a case that has kindled fiery passions in this country, an appeals court on Thursday acquitted two Christians, one a 14-year-old boy, of charges of blasphemy against Islam, a crime that carries a mandatory death penalty. Outside the courtroom in the city of Lahore, dozens of Muslim militants in white and green turbans demanded revenge and began throwing stones when the court's ruling was announced.

Sixteen years after Iran's revolution launched militant Islam as a powerful modern political force, the broader Islamist movement has fractured, deeply, into diverse and often disparate strains--in some cases even rivalries. The emerging Islamist spectrum in the mid-1990s ranges from the religious right elected to Kuwait's Parliament, where it is demanding sexually segregated classrooms and accountable government, to Egyptian militants trying to overthrow a secular state.

Under soaring aluminum domes that make the mosque in this village visible for miles, hundreds of Chechens kneel for Friday prayer. A murmur rises, then parts into distinct tones of a harmonic Arabic chant: "There is no God except Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet!" Perhaps because it is Ramadan, Islam's holy month, perhaps because Chechnya is at war, young men who do not usually frequent the mosque are here, on rows of colorful prayer rugs. Today, they make up about one-fifth of the worshipers.

In a major reversal after years of tentative openings, Iran is now moving to stifle the exchange of ideas in universities, the media, cultural circles and even mosques. The clampdown is a response to challenges to the clerical government's domination of all major aspects of everyday life. More startling still, the challenges are coming from the Islamic faithful themselves. Symbolizing the tension is the regime's crackdown on Abdol Karim Soroush, Iran's leading Islamic reformer and philosopher.