Religion Saudi Arabia

Despite calls for patience and courteousness, pilgrims pushed and shoved their way Friday around the Grand Mosque, where more than 1.5 million Muslims gathered to pray. On this last Muslim Sabbath before the peak of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia, the prayer leader urged pilgrims to be "kind, gentle, patient and tolerant to other pilgrims while they are performing the rituals."

When the body of nurse Yvonne Gilford was found Dec. 11, fear rippled through the walled compounds where foreigners live in Saudi Arabia. The 55-year-old Australian had suffered a grisly death. She had been stabbed four times, beaten with a hammer and suffocated in her bed. In a country that by world standards is almost crime-free, some wondered if a maniac was on the loose. Or was the murder politically motivated, akin to the bombing of the U.S.

Creating a sea of white robes, more than 2 million Muslims stood in prayer Monday in 100-degree heat at Arafat, the mount overlooking Mecca where the prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon 14 centuries ago. The annual pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca had been incident-free--unlike some previous ones, which were marred by fires and stampedes--and the Saudis were going out of their way to keep it that way.

Declaring that Islamic law "underlines the necessity of preserving man's dignity and his legitimate rights," a group of Saudi Arabian scholars earlier this month formed the conservative kingdom's first human rights organization. Within 10 days, the "Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights" had attracted 10,000 supporters with its message of fighting for the oppressed and eliminating injustice under the umbrella of the Islamic \o7 sharia, \f7 or law.

A professor at King Abdulaziz University was giving a lesson last month on politics and activism, terrorism and tolerance. The recent killing of Egyptian secularist author Farag Foda by Islamic extremists came up. "I said, 'It's one thing for Palestinians to kill Jews, or even for Palestinians to kill Arab collaborators, but Egyptians killing Egyptians? How can you justify the killing of Farag Foda?' " he recalled. "One student raised his hand and said, 'He wrote an article criticizing Islam.

Out in the Saudi Arabian desert on Christmas Eve, 28 soldiers shed their guns and worldly burdens and dip into the warm Saudi waters. This is no idle swim under the stars. Rather, it is a baptism, a ceremony admitting 28 souls to Christianity, a symbolic spiritual purification and washing away of sins. The soldiers of Operation Desert Shield are not only being baptized regularly, but also praying, witnessing, making confession and reading the Bible.

It was the 10th day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan in 1973, but Egyptian President Anwar Sadat already had decreed that his soldiers would be exempt from the fast as they prepared to launch a daring drive across the Suez Canal into the Sinai Desert. The president was more than a little discomfited when he strode into the operations room before the first strike and found his senior commanders fasting. The operation, he sternly warned, needed their full concentration.

Somewhere in Jidda, in a dark, crowded prison cell, six young men await their encounter with Islamic justice for ambushing a bus with guns this month and slightly wounding two American GIs. Justice for the men--four Palestinians and two Yemenis--is apt to be swift.

American and British commanders Friday warned soldiers not to eat, drink or smoke in public during daylight when the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins Sunday. "Guests in the kingdom are expected to be aware of Ramadan, respect the feelings of fasting people and conduct themselves accordingly," said a memorandum issued to U.S. personnel by the Central Command in Riyadh.

Their black cloaks and veils hanging neatly in the marble foyer, Omaima Khamis, her sisters and girlfriends gathered in the parlor to eat dates, drink spiced coffee and discuss fashion, family and astrological signs. No men would enter this world, a world segregated and regulated, like much of Saudi Arabia, by the dictates of 7th-Century Islamic beliefs.