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(I'reading a fascinating book calledThe Siege of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov. I came across of section I thought Freepers might find interesting. It has to do with the Muslim concept of the "End of Days" and part played in it by Jesus Christ. It is from Chapter 5, pp. 47-48. (P.S. I having to type this in, so please forgive by hunt-and-peck fingers. Hopefully there's not too many typos.) ================================================= "The idea of a Mahdi has fuel Muslim imagination for centuries. There is no mention of it in the Quran itself . But the Phophet Mohammed, according to some nattators,...

Thomas Lippman Washington Post November 25. 2007 The subtitle of Yaroslav Trofimov's fascinating and important book about the 1979 takeover of the Great Mosque in Mecca by heavily armed fanatics refers to that event as "the forgotten uprising." Perhaps it has been forgotten here but not in the Muslim Middle East, where it was a seminal event of the region's most traumatic year in modern times. That year began with the Iranian revolution and ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In between, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, radicalizing the Palestinians. Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq. And...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States used Israel's attack on the Hizbollah militia in Lebanon as a prelude to "settling accounts" with Iran, Interfax news agency quoted a senior Russian diplomat as saying on Wednesday. Vladimir Trofimov, deputy head of the foreign ministry's Middle East department, was quoted making the comments the day before Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov begins a visit to the Middle East that will include Israel. "If we look at Israeli and U.S. plans, they aim at removing the Hizbollah factor ahead of the forthcoming U.S. settling of accounts with Iran," Interfax quoted Trofimov as saying....

A former chief of the Moscow branch of the Federal Security Service, Colonel General Anatoly Trofimov, and his wife were killed in an apparent contract murder late Sunday, police said. Trofimov, 64, who had pursued a business career after leaving the FSB in 1997, was shot by a masked gunman outside his apartment at 11 Ulitsa Klyazminskaya in northern Moscow at about 7:30 p.m. Trofimov was in his Grand Cherokee Jeep when the assailant approached with a pistol, NTV said. His common-law wife, Tatyana Kopytseva, 28, and their daughter, Tatyana, 4, had just gotten out of the car. Trofimov was...

Former Top Russian Intelligence Official Gunned Down in Moscow The Associated Press Apr 10, 2005 MOSCOW (AP) - Assailants wielding automatic weapons from a passing car gunned down a former top Russian intelligence official while he drove on a Moscow street Sunday, Russian news agencies reported. Col. Gen. Anatoly Trofimov, former deputy chief of the Federal Security Service under President Boris Yeltsin, was shot in his sport utility vehicle around 7:30 p.m. on a northern street, the Interfax news agency reported. He died on the scene. The assailants fired from a small car, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. A woman...

<p>We shouldn't have been surprised that, after the looting of Baghdad's antiquities museum last weekend, negligent Americans, not the looters themselves, got most of the blame. For much of the media, every bad thing since the invasion has been America's fault. So adding another charge to the indictment was an easy call.</p>