2023: Gabriel - Gbaya

 

Gabriel
Gabriel (in Arabic, Jibril or Jabra’il). Angel of high rank in Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition.  He is one of the four most often cited archangels in Judaism and Christianity, the others being Michael, Raphael, and Uriel.  Gabriel is the heavenly messenger who appears in order to reveal God’s will.  In the Old Testament, Gabriel interprets the prophet’s vision of the ram and the he goat {see Daniel 8:15-26}  and explains the prediction of the 70 weeks of years (or 490 years) for the duration of the exile from Jerusalem {see Daniel 9:21-27} .  In the New Testament, Gabriel announces to Zacharias the birth of Zacharias’ son {see Luke 1:11-20} , who is destined to become known as John the Baptist, and to Mary that she is to be the mother of Jesus Christ {see Luke 1:26-31} .  Among Muslims, Gabriel is believed to be the spirit who revealed the sacred writings (the Qur’an) to the Prophet Muhammad.  Gabriel is the prince of fire and the spirit who presides over thunder and the ripening of fruits.  He is also an accomplished linguist, having taught Joseph the 70 languages spoken at Babel.  In art, he is generally represented carrying either a lily, Mary’s flower, at the annunciation or the trumpet that he will blow to announce the second coming. 

In Abrahamic religions, Gabriel (Hebrew: Gavriʼel; Tiberian: Gaḇrîʼēl; Latin: Gabrielus; Greek: Gabriēl; Arabic: Jibril, or  Jibrail; Aramaic: Gabri-el - "God is my strong man/hero") is an angel who serves as a messenger from God. Based on two passages in the Gospel of Luke, many Christians and Muslims believe Gabriel to have foretold the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus.

Islam further believes he was the medium through whom God revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad, and that he sent a message to most prophets, if not all, revealing their obligations. He is called the chief of the four favored angels and the spirit of truth, and in some views is a personification of the Holy Spirit. Gabriel is also mentioned in Bahá'í Faith texts, specifically in Bahá'u'lláh's mystical work Seven Valleys.
 
The Arabic name for Gabriel is Jibral, Jibril, Jibrīl, Djibril, Jabrilæ or Jibrail.  Muslims believe Gabriel to have been the angel who revealed the Qur'an to the prophet Muhammad.  Gabriel is regarded with the exact same respect by Muslims as all of the Prophets, and upon saying his name or referring to him a Muslim repeats: "peace be upon him". Gabriel's primary tasks are to bring messages from God to his messengers. As in Christianity, Gabriel is said to be the angel that informed Mary (Arabic Maryam) of how she would conceive Jesus (Isa).  (See Sura 19:17.)

Muslims believe Gabriel to have accompanied Muhammad in his ascension to the heavens, where Muhammad also is said to have met previous messengers of God, and was informed about the Islamic prayer (Bukhari 1:8:345). Muslims also believe that Gabriel descends to Earth on the night of Laylat al-Qadr ("The Night of Great Value"), a night in the last ten days of the holy month of Ramadan in the Islamic calendar which is believed to be the night in which the Qur'an was first revealed.


Jibril see Gabriel
Jabra'il see Gabriel
Gavri'el see Gabriel
Gabrielus see Gabriel
"God is my strong man/hero" see Gabriel

Gadhafi
Gadhafi  (Mu’ammar Gadhafi) (Mu’ammar Gadhdhafi) (Mu'ammar Qaddafi) (Mu’ammar Qadhafi) (Mu’ammar Qadhdhafi) (Mu’ammar Kadhafi) (Mu’ammar Kadhdhafi) (b. 1942, near Sirte, Libya - d, October 20, 2011, near Sirte, Libya).  De facto leader of Libya since 1969..

The son of an itinerant Bedouin farmer, Qaddafi was born in a tent in the Libyan desert. He proved a talented student and graduated from the University of Libya in 1963. A devout Muslim and ardent Arab nationalist, Qaddafi early began plotting to overthrow the Libyan monarchy of King Idrīs I. He graduated from the Libyan military academy in 1965 and thereafter rose steadily through the ranks, all the while continuing to plan a coup with the help of his fellow army officers. On Sept. 1, 1969, Qaddafi seized control of the government in a military coup that deposed King Idrīs. Qaddafi was named commander in chief of the armed forces and chairman of Libya’s new governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council.

Qaddafi removed the United States and British military bases from Libya in 1970. He expelled most members of the native Italian and Jewish communities from Libya that same year, and in 1973 he nationalized all foreign-owned petroleum assets in the country. He also outlawed alcoholic beverages and gambling, in accordance with his own strict Islamic principles. Qaddafi also began a series of persistent but unsuccessful attempts to unify Libya with other Arab countries. He was adamantly opposed to negotiations with Israel and became a leader of the so-called rejectionist front of Arab nations in this regard. He also earned a reputation for military adventurism; his government was implicated in several abortive coup attempts in Egypt and Sudan, and Libyan forces persistently intervened in the long-running civil war in neighboring Chad.

From 1974 onward Qaddafi espoused a form of Islamic socialism as expressed in The Green Book. This combined the nationalization of many economic sectors with a brand of populist government ostensibly operating through people’s congresses, labor unions, and other mass organizations. Meanwhile, Qaddafi was becoming known for his erratic and unpredictable behavior on the international scene. His government financed a broad spectrum of revolutionary or terrorist groups worldwide, including the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam in the United States and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. Squads of Libyan agents assassinated émigré opponents abroad, and his government was allegedly involved in several bloody terrorist incidents in Europe perpetrated by Palestinian or other Arab extremists. These activities brought him into growing conflict with the United States government, and in April 1986 a force of British-based United States warplanes bombed several sites in Libya, killing or wounding several of his children and narrowly missing Qaddafi himself.

Libya’s purported involvement in the destruction of a civilian airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, led to United Nations (UN) and United States sanctions that further isolated Qaddafi from the international community. In the late 1990s, however, Qaddafi turned over the alleged perpetrators of the bombing to international authorities. United Nations sanctions against Libya were subsequently lifted in 2003, and, following Qaddafi’s announcement that Libya would cease its unconventional-weapons program, the United States dropped most of its sanctions as well. Although some observers remained critical, these measures provided an opportunity for the rehabilitation of Qaddafi’s image abroad and facilitated his country’s gradual return to the global community.

In February 2009 Qaddafi was elected chairman of the African Union (AU), and later that year he gave his first speech before the UN General Assembly. The lengthy critical speech, in which he threw a copy of the UN charter, generated a significant measure of controversy within the international community. In early 2010 Qaddafi’s attempt to remain as chairman of the AU beyond the customary one-year term was met with resistance from several other African countries and ultimately was denied.

In February 2011, after anti-government demonstrations forced Presidents Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Ḥosnī Mubārak from power in the neighboring countries of Tunisia and Egypt, anti-Qaddafi demonstrations broke out in the Libyan city of Benghāzī. As the protests spread throughout the country, the Qaddafi regime attempted to violently suppress them, directing police and mercenary forces to fire live ammunition at protesters and ordering attacks by artillery, fighter jets, and helicopter gunships against demonstration sites. Foreign government officials and international human rights groups condemned the regime’s assault on the protesters. Qaddafi’s violent tactics also alienated senior figures in the Libyan government. The Libyan minister of justice resigned in protest and a number of senior Libyan diplomats either resigned or issued statements of support for the uprising. On February 22 Qaddafi delivered a rambling defiant speech on state television, refusing to step down and calling the demonstrators traitors and saboteurs. He claimed that the opposition had been directed by al-Qaeda and that the protesters had been under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. He urged his supporters to defend him by fighting protesters.

Qaddafi’s hold on power appeared increasingly weak as the opposition forces gained strength. By the end of February, opposition forces had established control over large amounts of Libyan territory, encircling Tripoli, where Qaddafi remained in control but in growing isolation. In interviews with the Western media on February 28, Qaddafi insisted that he was still well loved by the Libyan people and denied that the regime had used violence against the demonstrators. He repeated his claim that the opposition in Libya had been organized by al-Qaeda.

As the opposition gained strength, international pressure for Qaddafi to step down increased. On February 26 the UN Security Council unanimously approved a measure that included sanctions against the Qaddafi regime, imposing a travel ban and an arms embargo and freezing the Qaddafi family’s assets. On February 28 the United States announced that it had frozen $30 billion in Libyan assets linked to Qaddafi.

Although international opposition to Qaddafi’s actions continued to build, his forces seemed to regain the upper hand in Libya, retaking many of the areas that had been taken by the rebels early in the conflict. As Qaddafi’s forces advanced on Benghāzī, the UN Security Council voted on March 17 to authorize military intervention to protect civilians. The ensuing air campaign, led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), inflicted significant damage on pro-Qaddafi forces but did not decisively tip the balance in favor of the rebels, leading to an apparent stalemate between the two forces. In late March the Qaddafi regime was shaken by the defection of two senior Libyan officials, Moussa Koussa and Ali Abdussalam el-Treki, both members of Qaddafi’s inner circle. Despite those setbacks, Qaddafi appeared to remain firmly in control in Tripoli, stating publicly that he would resist any attempt to remove him from power. Pro-Qaddafi forces continued to operate in spite of the NATO air campaign.

On April 30 a NATO air strike on Qaddafi’s Bāb al-ʿAzīziyyah compound in Tripoli killed Qaddafi’s youngest son, Sayf al-Arab, and three of Qaddafi’s grandchildren. Qaddafi, reportedly in the targeted house at the time of the attack, escaped without injury. Following the air strike, NATO denied that it had adopted a strategy of trying to kill Qaddafi.

In early March the International Criminal Court (ICC) had announced that it would open an investigation into possible crimes against humanity by Qaddafi and his supporters. On May 16 the ICC called for arrest warrants to be issued against Qaddafi, along with his son Sayf al-Islam and the Libyan intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi, for ordering attacks on civilians during the uprising; the arrest warrants, for crimes against humanity, were issued on June 27, 2011.

In connection with the Libyan uprising, Qaddafi's attempts to influence public opinion in Europe and the United States came under increased scrutiny. At the beginning of the 2011 conflict a number of countries pushed for the international isolation of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. On July 15, 2011, at a meeting in Istanbul, more than 30 governments recognized the Transitional National Council (TNC) as the legitimate government of Libya.

Qaddafi responded to the announcement with a speech on Libyan national television, in which he said "Trample on those recognitions, trample on them under your feet ... They are worthless".

On 25 August 2011, with most of Tripoli having fallen out of Qaddafi's control, the Arab League proclaimed the anti-Qaddafi National Transitional Council to be "the legitimate representative of the Libyan state", on which basis Libya would resume its membership in the League.

During the Battle of Tripoli, Qaddafi lost effective political and military control of Tripoli after his compound had been captured by Rebel forces. Rebel forces entered the Green Square in the city center, tearing down posters of Qaddafi and flying flags of the rebellion. As of August 27, 2011, his location was unknown, but it was alleged that he fled to Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, he continued to give addresses through radio, calling upon his supporters to crush the rebels.

On October 20, 2011, a National Transitional Council (NTC) official told Al Jazeera that Qaddafi had been captured that morning by Libyan forces near his hometown of Sirte, in a tunnel west of the town. He had been in a convoy of vehicles that was targeted by a French air strike on a road about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) west of Sirte, killing dozens of loyalist fighters. Qaddafi survived but was wounded and took refuge with several of his bodyguards in a drainage tunnel underneath the road west of the city. NTC fighters found the group and took Qaddafi prisoner. Shortly afterwards, he was shot dead.

Gadhdhafi see Gadhafi
Qaddafi see Gadhafi
Qadhafi see Gadhafi
Qadhdhafi see Gadhafi
Kadhafi see Gadhafi
Kadhdhafi see Gadhafi

Galen
Galen (in Arabic, Jalinus) (Aelius Galenus) (Claudius Galenus) (September 129, Pergamum, Mysia, Anatolia – c. 216). Roman physician and philosopher of Greek origin.  Known as Galen of Pergamum (modern-day Bergama, Turkey), Galen was probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period. His theories dominated and influenced Western medical science for well over a millennium..  The Arabs came to possess translations of every work of Galen which were still being read in Greek centers of learning during the seventh through ninth centuries.  They thus knew a number of Galen’s works which disappeared in the late Byzantine period.  These works became an integral part of Arab medical learning.  The translations into Arabic, among others by Hunayn ibn Ishaq, greatly influenced medieval and renaissance medicine in Europe.

Galen of Pergamum came to exercise a dominant influence on medical theory and practice in Europe from the Middle Ages until the mid-17th century. His authority in the Byzantine world and the Muslim Middle East was similarly long-lived.

The son of a wealthy architect, Galen was educated as a philosopher and man of letters. His hometown, Pergamum, was the site of a magnificent shrine of the healing god, Asclepius, that was visited by many distinguished figures of the Roman Empire for cures. When Galen was 16, he changed his career to that of medicine, which he studied at Pergamum, at Smyrna (modern İzmir, Turkey), and finally at Alexandria in Egypt, which was the greatest medical center of the ancient world. After more than a decade of study, he returned in 157 to Pergamum, where he served as chief physician to the troop of gladiators maintained by the high priest of Asia.

In 162, the ambitious Galen moved to Rome. There he quickly rose in the medical profession owing to his public demonstrations of anatomy, his successes with rich and influential patients whom other doctors had pronounced incurable, his enormous learning, and the rhetorical skills he displayed in public debates. Galen’s wealthy background, social contacts, and a friendship with his old philosophy teacher Eudemus further enhanced his reputation as a philosopher and physician.

Galen abruptly ended his sojourn in the capital in 166. Although he claimed that the intolerable envy of his colleagues prompted his return to Pergamum, an impending plague in Rome was probably a more compelling reason. In 168–169, however, he was called by the joint emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius to accompany them on a military campaign in northern Italy. After Verus’ sudden death in 169, Galen returned to Rome, where he served Marcus Aurelius and the later emperors Commodus and Septimius Severus as a physician. Galen’s final works were written after 207, which suggests that his Arab biographers were correct in their claim that he died at age 87, in 216/217.

Galen regarded anatomy as the foundation of medical knowledge, and he frequently dissected and experimented on such lower animals as the Barbary ape (or African monkey), pigs, sheep, and goats. Galen’s advocacy of dissection, both to improve surgical skills and for research purposes, formed part of his self-promotion, but there is no doubt that he was an accurate observer. He distinguished seven pairs of cranial nerves, described the valves of the heart, and observed the structural differences between arteries and veins. One of his most important demonstrations was that the arteries carry blood, not air, as had been taught for 400 years. Notable also were his vivisection experiments, such as tying off the recurrent laryngeal nerve to show that the brain controls the voice, performing a series of transsections of the spinal cord to establish the functions of the spinal nerves, and tying off the ureters to demonstrate kidney and bladder functions. Galen was seriously hampered by the prevailing social taboo against dissecting human corpses, however, and the inferences he made about human anatomy based on his dissections of animals often led him into errors. His anatomy of the uterus, for example, is largely that of the dog’s.

Galen’s physiology was a mixture of ideas taken from the philosophers Plato and Aristotle as well as from the physician Hippocrates, whom Galen revered as the fount of all medical learning. Galen viewed the body as consisting of three connected systems: the brain and nerves, which are responsible for sensation and thought; the heart and arteries, responsible for life-giving energy; and the liver and veins, responsible for nutrition and growth. According to Galen, blood is formed in the liver and is then carried by the veins to all parts of the body, where it is used up as nutriment or is transformed into flesh and other substances. A small amount of blood seeps through the lungs between the pulmonary artery and pulmonary veins, thereby becoming mixed with air, and then seeps from the right to the left ventricle of the heart through minute pores in the wall separating the two chambers. A small proportion of this blood is further refined in a network of nerves at the base of the skull (in reality found only in ungulates) and the brain to make psychic pneuma, a subtle material that is the vehicle of sensation. Galen’s physiological theory proved extremely seductive, and few possessed the skills needed to challenge it in succeeding centuries.

Building on earlier Hippocratic conceptions, Galen believed that human health requires an equilibrium between the four main bodily fluids, or humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Each of the humors is built up from the four elements and displays two of the four primary qualities: hot, cold, wet, and dry. Unlike Hippocrates, Galen argued that humoral imbalances can be located in specific organs, as well as in the body as a whole. This modification of the theory allowed doctors to make more precise diagnoses and to prescribe specific remedies to restore the body’s balance. As a continuation of earlier Hippocratic conceptions, Galenic physiology became a powerful influence in medicine for the next 1,400 years.

Galen was both a universal genius and a prolific writer: about 300 titles of works by him are known, of which about 150 survive wholly or in part. He was perpetually inquisitive, even in areas remote from medicine, such as linguistics, and he was an important logician who wrote major studies of scientific method. Galen was also a skilled polemicist and an incorrigible publicist of his own genius, and these traits, combined with the enormous range of his writings, help to explain his subsequent fame and influence.

Galen’s writings achieved wide circulation during his lifetime, and copies of some of his works survive that were written within a generation of his death. By 500 his works were being taught and summarized at Alexandria, and his theories were already crowding out those of others in the medical handbooks of the Byzantine world. Greek manuscripts began to be collected and translated by enlightened Arabs in the 9th century, and about 850 Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, an Arab physician at the court of Baghdad, prepared an annotated list of 129 works of Galen that he and his followers had translated from Greek into Arabic or Syriac. Learned medicine in the Arabic world thus became heavily based upon the commentary, exposition, and understanding of Galen.

Galen’s influence was initially almost negligible in western Europe except for drug recipes, but from the late 11th century Ḥunayn’s translations, commentaries on them by Arab physicians, and sometimes the original Greek writings themselves were translated into Latin. These Latin versions came to form the basis of medical education in the new medieval universities. From about 1490, Italian humanists felt the need to prepare new Latin versions of Galen directly from Greek manuscripts in order to free his texts from medieval preconceptions and misunderstandings. Galen’s works were first printed in Greek in their entirety in 1525, and printings in Latin swiftly followed. These texts offered a different picture from that of the Middle Ages, one that emphasized Galen as a clinician, a diagnostician, and above all, an anatomist. His new followers stressed his methodical techniques of identifying and curing illness, his independent judgment, and his cautious empiricism. Galen’s injunctions to investigate the body were eagerly followed, since physicians wished to repeat the experiments and observations that he had recorded. Paradoxically, this soon led to the overthrow of Galen’s authority as an anatomist. In 1543 the Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius showed that Galen’s anatomy of the body was more animal than human in some of its aspects, and it became clear that Galen and his medieval followers had made many errors. Galen’s notions of physiology, by contrast, lasted for a further century, until the English physician William Harvey correctly explained the circulation of the blood. The renewal and then the overthrow of the Galenic tradition in the Renaissance was an important element in the rise of modern science, however.

Jalinus see Galen
Aelius Galenus see Galen
Galenus, Aelius see Galen
Claudius Galenus see Galen
Galenus, Claudius see Galen
Galenos see Galen

Gamaat al-Islamiyya, al-
Gamaat al-Islamiyya, al- (GI -- al-Gamaat al-Islamiyya) (IG -- the Islamic Group, al-Gama’at, Islamic Gama’at, Egyptian al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya).  The IG, begun in the 1970s, is the largest of the Egyptian militant groups.  Its core goal is the overthrow of the Cairo regime and the creation of an Islamic state.  The IG was a more loosely organized entity than the EIJ (Egyptian Islamic Jihad), and maintained a globally present external wing.  IG leadership signed Usama bin Laden’s February 1998 anti-United States fatwa but denied supporting bin Laden.  Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman was al-Gama’at’s spiritual leader, and thus the United States was threatened with attack.  From 1993, until the cease fire, al-Gama’at launched attacks on tourists in Egypt, most notably the attack in November 1997 at Luxor that killed 58 foreign tourists.  The IG also claimed responsibility for the attempt in June 1995 to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Adaba, Ethiopia.  IG has a worldwide presence, including Sudan, the United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Austria, and Yemen.  The Egyptian government believed that Iran, bin Laden, and Afghan militant groups supported the IG.   {See also Bin Laden; Egyptian Islamic Jihad; and Mubarak.}

Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya (Arabic: al-jamāʕaħ al-'islāmiyyaħ) (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"; also transliterated Gamaat Islamiya, al Jamaat al Islamiya, and El Gama'a El Islamiyya) is an Egyptian Islamist movement, and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union and Egyptian governments. The group is (or was) dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and replacing it with an Islamic state.

The now imprisoned cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman was a spiritual leader of the movement. The group is reported to be responsible for the killing of hundreds of Egyptian policemen and soldiers, civilians, dozens of tourists in a violent campaign in the 1990s. While the assassination of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 is generally thought to have been carried out by another Islamist group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, some have suggested al-Gamaat was responsible for or at least related to the assassination. In 2003 the imprisoned leadership of the group renounced bloodshed, and a series of high-ranking members have since been released by Egyptian authorities, and the group has been allowed to resume semi-legal peaceful activities.

Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya began as an umbrella organization for militant student groups, formed, like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, after the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s.

In its early days, the group was primarily active on university campuses, and was mainly composed of university students. In addition, Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya recruited some inmates of Egyptian jails. Its membership has since become poorer, younger, and less well educated. Its main base of recruiting and support has moved away from universities to poor neighborhoods of cities, and to rural areas.

Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya may have been indirectly involved in the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Karam Zuhdi, group leader of Al-Jamaat Islamiya, expressed regret for conspiring with Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. He was among the 900 militants who were set free in April 2006 by the Egyptian government.

The cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman is the spiritual leader of the movement. He was accused of participating in the World Trade Center 1993 bombings conspiracy, and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his espousal of a subsequent conspiracy to bomb New York City landmarks, including the United Nations and FBI offices. The Islamic Group has publicly threatened to retaliate against the United States unless Rahman is released from prison. However, the group later renounced violence and their leaders and members were released from prison in Egypt.

While the Islamic group had originally been an amorphous movement of local groups centered in mosques without offices or membership roll, by the late 1980s it became more organized and even adopted an official logo: an upright sword standing on an open Qur'an with an orange sun rising in the background, encircled by the Qur'anic verse that Abdel Rahman had quoted at his trials while trying to explain jihad to the judges.

The 1990s saw Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya engage in an extended campaign of violence, from the murders and attempted murders of prominent writers and intellectuals, to the repeated targeting of tourists and foreigners. This did serious damage to the largest sector of Egypt's economy and in turn to the government, but it also devastated the livelihoods of many of the people on whom the group depends for support.

Victims of campaign against the Egyptian state from 1992-1997 totaled more than 1200 and included the head of the counter-terrorism police (Major General Raouf Khayrat), a speaker of parliament (Rifaat al-Mahgoub), dozens of European tourists and Egyptian bystanders, and over 100 Egyptian police.

The 1991 killing of the group's leader, Ala Mohieddin, presumably by security forces, led Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya to murder Egypt's speaker of parliament in retaliation. In June 1995, working together with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group staged a carefully planned attempt on the life of president Mubarak, lead by Mustafa Hamza, a senior Egyptian member of the Al-Qaeda and commander of the military branch of the Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya. Mubarak escaped unharmed and retaliated with a massive and ruthless crackdown on GI members and their families in Egypt.

By 1997 the movement had become paralyzed. 20,000 Islamists were in custody in Egypt and thousands more had been cut down by the security forces. In July of that year, Islamist lawyer Montassir al-Zayyat brokered a deal between the Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian government, called the Nonviolence Initiative, whereby the movement formally renounced violence. The next year the government released 2,000 members of the Islamic Group. After the initiative was declared Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman also gave his approval from his prison cell in the United States, though he later withdrew it.

The initiative divided the Islamic Group between members in Egypt who supported it and those in exile who wanted the attacks to continue. Leading the opposition was EIJ leader Ayman Zawahiri who termed it "surrender" in angry letters to the London newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat.

Zawahiri enlisted Mustafa Hamza, the new emir of Islamic Groups and its military leader, Rifai Ahmed Taha, both exiles in Afghanistan with him, to sabotage the initiative with a massive terrorism attack that would provoke the government into repression. So on November 17, 1997 the Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya campaign climaxed with the attack at the Temple of Hatshepsut (Deir el-Bahri) in Luxor, in which a band of six men dressed in police uniforms machine-gunned and hacked to death with knives 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians. The killing went on for 45 minutes, until the floors streamed with blood. The dead included a five-year-old British child and four Japanese couples on their honeymoons. Altogether 71 people were killed. The attack stunned Egyptian society, devastated the tourist industry for a number of years, and consequently sapped a large segment of popular support for violent Islamism in Egypt.

The revulsion of Egyptians and rejection of jihadi terrorism was so complete, the attack's supporters backpedaled. The day after the attack, Rifai Taha claimed the attackers intended only to take the tourists hostage, despite the evidence of the systematic nature of the slaughter. Others denied Islamist involvement completely. Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman blamed Israelis for the killings, and Zawahiri maintaining the Egyptian police had done it.

Major attacks carried out by Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya:

    * 17 November 1997 – Luxor massacre at Deir el-Bahri, Luxor, Egypt. 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were killed.
    * 28 April 1996 – Europa Hotel shooting, Cairo. 18 Greek tourists were killed, mistaken to be Jews.[13][14][15]
    * 19 November 1995 – Car bomb attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. 16 people were killed.
    * 20 October 1995 – Car bomb attack on police station in Rijeka, Croatia
    * 26 June 1995 – attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
    * 8 June 1992 – assassination of Farag Foda.

Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya was also responsible for a spate of tourist shootings (trains and cruise ships sprayed with bullets) in middle and upper Egypt during the early 1990s. As a result of those attacks, cruise ships ceased sailing between Cairo and Luxor for several years.

After spending more than two decades in prison and after intense debates and discussions with Al-Azhar scholars, most of the leaders of Al-Gama'at Al-Islamiyya have written several books renouncing their ideology of violence and some of them went as far as calling ex-Egyptian president Sadat, whom they assassinated, a martyr.

Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya renounced bloodshed in 2003, and in September 2003 Egypt freed more than 1,000 members, citing what Interior Minister Habib el-Adli called the group's stated "commitment to rejecting violence."

Harsh repressive measures by the Egyptian government and the unpopularity of the killing of foreign tourists reduced the group's profile but the movement retained popular support among Egyptian Islamists who disapproved of the secular nature of Egypt's society and peace treaty with Israel.

In April 2006 the Egyptian government released approximately 1200 members, including a founder, Najeh Ibrahim, from prison.

On August 5, 2006, the deputy leader of al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri announced a new alliance with a faction of Al Gama'a al-Islamiyya.
IG see Gamaat al-Islamiyya, al-
Islamic Group see Gamaat al-Islamiyya, al-
Islamic Gama'at see Gamaat al-Islamiyya, al-
Egyptian al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya see Gamaat al-Islamiyya, al-
GI see Gamaat al-Islamiyya, al-

Gamzat-bek

Gamzat-bek, also known as Hamza-Bek, Hamza Bek ibn Ali Iskandar Bek al-Hutsali (b. 1789 — d, October 1, 1834) was the second imam of the Caucasian Imamate.   Gamzat-bek succeeded Ghazi Muhammad upon Ghazi Muhammad's death in 1832.

Gamzat-bek was a son of one of the Avar beks. He was educated under the supervision of Muslim preachers and became an avid follower of a Sufi order. In August 1834, Gamzat-bek launched an assault on the Avar khans, who had been supporting the Russian Empire government and who had been hostile towards the Sufism movement. He succeeded in capturing the Avar capital of Khunzakh and executed its female ruler Pakhubike and her sons.  However, the supporters of the Avar khans, including Hadji Murad, conspired against Gamzat-bek and killed him (Leo Tolstoy's story Hadji Murat is based on this event). After the death of Gamzat-bek, Shamil became the third Imam of Dagestan -- the third Imam of the Caucasian Imamate.

The Dagestan struggle against the Russians began when the Russians formally acquired control of Dagestan from Persia (Iran) in 1813. After Ghazi Muḥammad was killed by the Russians (in 1832) and his successor, Gamzat Bek, was assassinated by his own followers (in 1834), Shamil was elected to serve as the third Imam (political-religious leader) of Dagestan -- the third Imam of Caucasian Imamate. 

Ganda
Ganda.  The Ganda belong to the Bantu-speaking people of Africa and live in Uganda.  Ganda is the root of their tribal name, and to this, several prefixes are added to form related concept words:  mu ganda -- a member of the tribe; ba ganda -- the plural; Lu ganda -- the language; Ki ganda -- the religion and tradition; Bu ganda -- the land of the Baganda.  Uganda is the name given to the entire country as formed by colonial British rule. 

Buganda was one of the African kingdoms which developed in the inter-lacustrine region around lakes Victoria, Edward, Albert and Kygoa and included in addition to Buganda the kingdoms of Bunyoro, Ankole, Karagwe, Koki, Buziba, Toro and Soga states.  The kingdom of Buganda was established in about 1300 northwest of Lake Victoria, a region of fertile soil, pleasant climate, adequate rainfall and lush natural growth, all in all, a favorable environment for human development.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century Buganda became the strongest kingdom in the area.  It had a well-organized and centralized government under the absolute rule of the kabaka (king).  According to local traditions a dynasty of about 35 kings ruled over it.

The Ganda had their own indigenous religion with its gods (balubale), fetishes, ghosts, priests and rituals, which were well known and established.  Some aspects in their religion were helpful to the diffusion of Islam and Christianity.  The Ganda, for example, already believed in a supreme being, the god Katonda, creator and ruler of the universe.  Nevertheless, in daily life his influence was not felt in the same way as that of other national gods or local clan gods.

When the first Europeans reached Buganda (I. H. Speke and J. A. Grant in 1862 and H. M. Stanley in 1875), they were impressed with the well-organized kingdom and indicated that the Ganda were far more advanced and cultured than any of their neighbors.  They were also surprised by their tidy dress and the advanced structure of their clean homes, which were much superior to those of any of the surrounding peoples. 

During the British rule (1894-1962) the Kingdom of Buganda constituted one of the four provinces of Uganda, and it enjoyed extensive autonomy.  It was officially abolished in 1967 by President A. M. Obote.

Islam was the first monotheistic religion to enter Buganda.  Its initial diffusion occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century during the reign of Kabaka Suna II (circa 1832-1856) when Arab and Swahili traders arrived from Zanzibar and the coast of East Africa.  Suna treated the Muslim traders favorably, and Buganda witnessed the first stages of Islamization.  The king and some of his relatives were influenced by several Muslim religious ideas and even studied a few short chapters of the Qur’an, particularly those considered to be formulas for protection against magic and spirits.  Nevertheless, because of the relatively long journey from the coast, the small demand for cloth and other merchandise, along with the limited number of Muslim traders who arrived in the kingdom, the impact of Islam was meager. 

The process of Islamization in Buganda reached its climax during the reign of Kabaka Mutesa I (1856-1884).  Mutesa was a clever, pragmatic and shrewd king, and he encouraged Muslim traders to come to his country mainly to get from them material benefits and especially guns and gunpowder to strengthen his position among his neighbors.  Mutesa’s approach to religion was utilitarian.  Nonetheless, his unusual curiosity, wit and intelligence led to his being genuinely impressed by certain Muslim religious ideas.  Besides, the Kabaka was a secular monarch who, although carrying out some important religious duties, was not considered a god or a priest. 

The kings of Buganda were often in conflict with the traditional religious establishment of gods, mediums and priests.  Therefore, Mutesa tried to use the new religion, Islam, to weaken the influence of the traditional priests.  In 1865, Mutesa declared Islam the official religion of Buganda and imposed it on all his subjects, a situation that lasted ten years.  A royal decree was issued that the three rituals of regular prayers, fasting during Ramadan and eating lawful meat must be considered obligatory and the transgressor would be convicted and might even be put to death.

Coercion and threats were used to enforce the new religion among the people, thus assuring the superficial character of Islam in the country.  For example, a custom connected with the Muslim pre-prayer ablutions was to clean and dry the feet by rubbing them on a big stone placed before the mosque.  When the Kabaka wished to know if his subjects were performing the prayers regularly, he would send his inspectors to see if they had stones in front of their courtyards. 

The arrival of Christianity in Buganda in the 1870s brought a change in the position of Islam.  The first Protestant missionaries arrived in 1877.  In 1879, the Catholics followed and Islam’s position was challenged.  The Kabaka was given to understand that the Christian world possessed technical superiority, greater force, wider resources and more wealth than the Arabs and that he could utilize these advantages for the advancement of his interests.  Mutesa’s attitude towards Islam was shaken, and he allowed the missionaries to teach him and his subjects the precepts of Christianity.  However, the rivalry between Catholics and Protestants weakened the Christian influence, and in the competition between Christians and Muslims, the Muslims’ influence was usually more successful.  Although Mutesa was, during most of his reign, nearer to Islam, he shrewdly realized that a greater advantage might be gained by avoiding clear identification with any religion, and from time to time he consulted the traditional gods and mediums.

The history of Buganda after Mutesa reflects the vitality of the Islamic nucleus established during his regime, and when his successor, Mwanga, assumed the throne in 1884, the Muslim position was generally strong.  When war broke out between Muslims and Christians towards the end of the 1880s, the Muslims won.  With European help, the Christians reversed the victory and crushed the Muslims by 1884, when Buganda became a part of the British protectorate of Uganda.  Since then, Christianity has been the dominant religion of the country.

The position of Muslims in the colonial period was weak.  While Christians, with foreign help, developed schools and health facilities, Muslims languished.  They lacked foreign assisatnce and objected not only to secular education but to sending their children to schools run by Christians.  Quranic schools did not prepare their young people for government positions.

Personal rivalries and religious conflicts among the Muslims were additional negative influences on the development of Islam in Buganda.  Prince Nuhu Mbogo, the Muslim brother of Kabaka Mutesa I, was officially recognized by the British in 1892 as the leader of the Muslim community.  The fact that Mbogo came from the royal family strengthened his leadership.  Mbogo was a moderate and accepted by all Muslims as their sole leader.  This situation changed drastically after his death in 1921, and his successor Prince Badru Kakungulu became involved in Muslim internal rivalries.  One of the conflicts which left a crucial and still visible mark on the Muslim community.  The fact that Mbogo came from the royal family strengthened his leadership.  Mbogo was a moderate and accepted by all Muslims as their sole leader.  This situation changed drastically after his death in 1921, and his successor Prince Badru Kakungulu became involved in Muslim internal rivalries.  One of the conflicts which left a crucial and still visible mark on the Muslim community was the Juma-Zukuli dispute.  The point of issue was whether the ordinary noonday prayer (Zukuli) might be omitted on Fridays or should be prayed in addition to the Juma, which is recited on Fridays.  In Buganda, under the influence of the Swahili teachers, the Juma prayer was recited in conjunction with Zukuli.  The issue arose in a severe form after Nuhu Mbogo’s death when Abdullah Sekimwanyi, one of the most learned Muslim shaikhs and one of the first of the Baganda to make the pilgrimage to Mecca (in 1920), started to pray the Juma alone.  He was followed by others.  His opponents were led by Prince Badru Kakungulu, the son of Mbogo, who was under the influence of a Swahili shaikh, Khalfan ibn Mubaraka.  The Kakungulu faction was called the Juma-Zukuli and was the more popular and influential group.  This ostensibly religious aspect was inextricably involved with political and personal jealousy.

The two factions differed also on other religious issues.  The Juma faction objected to the use of matali (drums) at religious ceremonies and insisted on the use of the calendar to determine the timing of Ramadan, while the Juma-Zukuli allowed the use of drums and determined the start of Ramadan by the sight of the moon.  These differences among the Baganda Muslims still exist.

Despite its competitive disadvantages, Islam expanded in the colonial period due to improved communications and security.  Baganda Muslim traders, shopkeepers, watchmen, cooks and interpreters (Muslims generally knew Kiswahili better than the Christians and therefore were recruited by British administrators as interpreters) penetrated from their center in Buganda into other areas and spread Islam there.  Muslim population growth was proportionately higher than that of any other religion in Uganda.

In the first five years of Uganda independence, when the ruling party of Prime Minister Obote, the Uganda Peoples Congress, was allied with the Kabaka of Buganda, the Baganda Muslims exerted increasing influence through their leader, Prince Kakungulu, who was a close relative of the Kabaka.  The government recognized Id al Fitr as a national holiday.  The right to slaughter animals for public consumption was granted exclusively to the Muslim community.  But in 1965, when the cracks in the coalition between Obote and the Kabaka became wider, a new split, mainly political in character, occurred.  Obote established a new Muslim organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Muslims (N. A. A. M.).  Its main aim was to recruit the support of Muslims of Uganda, including Buganda, for government policies and to oppose Prince Kakungulu, who supported his uncle, the Kabaka, and whose center was in the Kibuli hills of Kampala.  After the abolition of the Buganda kingdom by Obote in 1966, the activities of the Kibuli groups were severely limited, and its leaders, among them Prince Kakungulu, were arrested.

General Idi Amin’s coup in January 1971 reversed the situation entirely.  N.A.A.M. was outlawed.  Kibuli followers took revenge upon their rivals.  Idi Amin, a Muslim, tried to recruit support of Muslims both within and outside Uganda by emphasizing his devoutness.  Islamic activities and construction of new mosques occupied a prominent place.  Although more than two-thirds of the population in Uganda were Christians, Idi Amin convinced the Arab and Muslim world that the majority were Muslims and declared Uganda a Muslim country.  Uganda was admitted as a member of the Islamic Conference Organization and became a beneficiary of Arab financial aid.  The Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah in 1978 pledged $60 million for building an Islamic university in Kampala “in appreciation of Idi Amin’s untiring effort in the Islamization of Uganda.”  This Muslim preeminence ended with the fall of Idi Amin in 1979.

During Idi Amin’s rule the main motives for conversion to Islam were fear or desire for benefits.  When Amin was toppled, Christians in various parts of the country, especially in the town of Masaka, took revenge, killing Muslims and burning houses and shops.  In April 1982, Obote promised an Arab delegation that he would re-open the Islamic University and “build a united nation without any tribal or religious discrimination.”  {See also Idi Amin; Mutesa I; shpeoplealso called Baganda, or Waganda,

people inhabiting the area north and northwest of Lake Victoria in south-central Uganda. They speak a Bantu language—called Ganda, or Luganda—of the Benue-Congo group. The Ganda are the most numerous people in Uganda and their territory the most productive and fertile. Once the core of the Uganda Protectorate, they have a higher standard of living and are more literate and modernized than any other people in Uganda.

The traditional Ganda are settled hoe cultivators, with plantains their staple food. They also grow cotton and coffee for export. They keep sheep, goats, chickens, and cattle.

Descent, inheritance, and succession are patrilineal. About 50 exogamous clans are recognized, each having principal and secondary totem animals that may not be killed or eaten.

Traditional Ganda religion recognized ancestors, past kings, nature spirits, and a pantheon of gods who were approached through spirit mediums. Most modern Ganda, however, are Christian. Traditional Ganda villages were compact, centred on the chief’s house.

By the early 19th century the Ganda had developed a well-organized, efficient administrative hierarchy and a sophisticated political system centred on the institution and person of the kabaka (king). The kabaka was also the high priest and supreme judge of the land. Ruling through a system of governors and district chiefs, the kabaka maintained absolute control over his ever-expanding kingdom. The Ganda state was organized for war, the Nyoro being its hereditary enemies. On becoming the first in the region to accept British influence, the Ganda gained even greater power and a special status in the politics of the Uganda Protectorate, a status they retained after the departure of the British. Between 1966 and 1993, however, the centuries-old kingship was abolished; the kabaka was restored in 1993, although his powers were reduced considerably.

Gandhi
Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) (1869-1948). India’s major nationalist leader who was often known by the Hindu title mahatma (“great soul”).  Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi on January 30, 1948, six months after India’s independence, by a Hindu who blamed him for the subcontinent’s partition into India and Muslim Pakistan when the British left.

Gandhi’s family came from a trader caste in Gujarat, western India.  Several relatives had served in the administration of a minor princely state, but the family had no connections with developing continental politics in British India, which was largely dominated by the Indian National Congress.   Gandhi’s emergence as a major figure in the Congress after World War I was even more unlikely because he was diffident as a young man.  Despite reading for the bar in London in 1888-1889, Gandhi had no university degree and failed in his legal practice in Bombay.  From 1893, he spent two decades in South Africa, then returned permanently to India in 1915, a middle-aged stranger to Indian public life.

South Africa, however, had proved a crucial experience.  As a lawyer, gradually drawn in to lead the diverse Indian community (consisting of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) in its struggle against European discrimination, he taught himself the political skills of organization, publicity, negotiation, and agitation.  From his South African campaigns, Gandhi gained public notoriety in Britain and in India and learned to work with Indians from different religious and regional backgrounds.  He also took the progressive stance of involving women in his political activities.   Finally, while in South Africa, Gandhi’s personal life and values underwent a radical change, symbolized by his vow of celibacy and his experiments with a simple community life, in the manner of a Hindu ashram, for his relatives and close associates.

Drawing on experience, on his reading of Christian and Western religion and philosophy, and on his Hindu inheritance, Gandhi became convinced that all persons have an innate spark of truth or ultimate reality deep within them.  To strive for perfection, Gandhi believed that each person must learn to respond to the inward truth by listening to what Gandhi called the “inner voice” and disciplining himself by simplicity and self-denial in preparation for such spiritual receptivity.  In later life, Gandhi would say not “God is Truth” but rather that “Truth is God.”  He believed that none of the world’s religions had completely discovered such truth, although all gave sincere believers a path toward the Truth and a partial vision of it.  Consequently, in Gandhi’s worldview there were as many religions as there were individuals.  From Gandhi’s belief in the spiritual nature and destiny of man, a nature and destiny imperfectly realized by reason of man’s faulty apprehension of Truth, flowed a passionate dedication to religious tolerance, to non-violence (ahimsa) in all conflicts as the safeguard of the integrity of all involved, and to a way of life markedly contrasting with Western industrial civilization, which in Gandhi’s eyes corrupted humanity with false ideals of wealth and competitiveness.  He castigated British rule in India and Indians who absorbed or aped Western culture, claiming that they destroyed India spiritually, and believed that India’s mission in the world was to be true to itself by basing national life on sufficiency and not on endless accumulation, on interdependence and not on competition and exploitation -- a way of life possible only in a village setting.

Gandhi’s ideas about India’s present and future became more definite after 1915.  When people accused him of inconsistency, he argued that courage to modify opinions was a hallmark of the truth seeker.  He increasingly concentrated on softening communal hostilities; on changing Hindu attitudes that oppressed those at the base of caste society, particularly the Untouchables; and on reviving spinning, by hand, along with other village industries, as part of a total plan of village uplift.  Politically, he began to work for the demolition of the British Raj, but for him swaraj (“self-rule”) was never just political independence: it meant reconstructing an Indian nation from its spiritual and social roots.  His ashrams strove to build this new identity in microcosm and to train people to be spiritually aware and dedicated to the service of mankind. 

Gandhi’s participation in Indian politics before 1920 was limited to occasions in which he perceived a wrong or grievance that could be righted by the method of non-violent protest that he had begun to forge in Africa.  He called his method satyagraha (“truth-force”) and believed it was far more than the passive resistance of the weak known in the West, for it demanded courage of mind and body, and it also purified and turned to a fuller vision of truth those who practiced it and those against whom it was deployed.  It could take various forms, from mass non-violent non-cooperation with the government or the breaking of unjust laws to individual demonstrations and fasts.  After 1920, Gandhi assumed that full participation in the anti-British struggle was not only his rightful role but also an integral part of his wider-ranging work for true swaraj.  He began to make more than brief appearances at Congress sessions, and, in fact, his dramatic rise to leadership in the Indian National Congress began at this time.  He called for non-cooperation and non-violence, which, he predicted, would result in swaraj in one year.  Gandhi’s rise to power rested not on large-scale conversion to his views but rather on politician’s calculations -- in terms of all-India and provincial politics -- that alliance with Gandhi and a temporary strategy of non-cooperation with the government might prove productive, since cooperation and violent resistance offered equally little prospect of political achievement. 

Thereafter, Gandhi’s career was one of political peaks and troughs.  Times of apparent retirement, in which Gandhi concentrated on the reconstruction of villages and the amelioration of conditions for Untouchables, and phases in which he led all-India satyagrahas, as in 1920-1922, 1930-1934, and 1940-1942.  Recurring characteristics of these agitations included very loose central control and a tendency to degenerate into violence as they became the focus and channel of myriad local grievances and aspirations.  Gandhi and other major leaders were regularly jailed.  Congressmen followed Gandhi, not blindly or constantly, but only when his particular technique suited their needs and interests or seemed the only basis for much-needed unity.  This support was equally true both of provinicial Congressional groups or Congress as an all-India vehicle of nationalism.  Even in his apparently fallow phases, Gandhi remained a seminal figure in Congressional deliberations, revered and often referred to, even by those whose views differed from his.

Once World War II had ended and it was clear that the British were intent on departure, the Mahatma played a less significant role in the intricate negotiations for independence.  A tired old man, deeply hurt and even demoralized by the horrific evidence of communal violence that he had tried to stem in strife-torn areas, Gandhi called himself “a back number.”  In many ways, partition and the nature of government and politics after independence made Gandhi realize that Indians had neither achieved nor desired the true swaraj of his vision.

Understandably, Gandhi was and is a controversial figure.  Despite the awe and devotion that surrounded him, in his lifetime, British and Indians alike questioned his priorities, particularly his concentration on social work and his attempt to swing India from the path of industrialization.  Many found his religious vision inexplicable or doubted his integrity, judging him a charlatan who manipulated religion for political ends.  Muslims increasingly perceived him as the symbol of a future Hindu-dominated India despite his work for communal harmony, a misconception inexplicable, however, in light of the Hindu style of his leadership and appeal and the growing adherence of the Hindu majority to Congress, of which he was the figurehead.  Since his death, he has become a rather legendary figure and is often called the “father of the Indian nation.”  However, his priorities and prescriptions for India are today largely ignored and variants of satyagraha are used in the most un-Gandhian ways. 

Later commentators from many disciplines have been similarly intrigued and perplexed by Gandhi’s role and significance.  Some have delved into the early, emotional experiences that produced a man so dedicated to public action yet overscrupulous about his motivation and most private life, a man so highly driven yet so full of self-doubt, a man of immense moral and physical courage who delighted in a maternal role.  Others, who have examined the origins and internal coherence of his beliefs, recognize that he was neither trained philosopher nor founder of a philosophical school but a pragmatic seeker after truth who was guided by a few fundamental principles.  Among historians, interest has focused on his political role.  Earlier, hagiographical studies have given place to more realistic assessments, based on his copious writings and a weight of other primary evidence generated by the political interplay of British and Indian leaders and Indians with one another.  Simple assertions about his charismatic appeal and ability to generate and lead mass political campaigns now tend to be replaced by more detailed investigations of precisely who followed him and why, the evidence being illuminated by a deeper awareness of the differing characteristics of politics in the diverse regions of so vast a land.

As an all-India leader with a flexible method and a flair for conciliation, Gandhi was often highly attractive for limited periods in specific political circumstances.  His personality undoubtedly brought thousands onto the streets in political demonstrations.  Yet this support could ebb as quickly as it had flowed, both among permanently committed political activists and those who were temporarily motivated into agitation campaigns.  Furthermore, investigations of the weakness and internal contradictions of the British Raj, and of the declining worth of India to Britain from the 1920s, have lessened the long-term historical significance of Gandhian satyagraha in undermining the imperial edifice. 

It is clear nonetheless that Gandhi’s campaigns had great importance in educating Indians in political awareness and action and in bonding them across old barriers of region and caste -- key factors in India’s subsequent stability as a democratic nation.  As an inspiration and educator who changed the nation’s sense of identity, Gandhi played a highly creative public role.  He underlined and confronted some of the critical problems facing the new nation and illuminated the lives of the countless individuals to whom he gave time, affection, and advice, tempering discipline with tenderness and humor.  He remains an enigmatic, powerful figure who demands attention and whose life and death ask uncomfortable yet abiding questions about the nature of the self and its relationship to the environment and to all humanity.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi see Gandhi
Mahatma see Gandhi
Great Soul see Gandhi

Ganjshakar, Fariduddin
Farid al-Din Mas'ud Ganj-i-Shaka (b.c. April 4, 1179, Kothewal, Multan, Punjab, Ghurid Sultanate (present day Pakistan) - d. May 7, 1266 [5 Muharram 665 AH], Pakpattan, Punjab, Delhi Sultanate (present day Pakistan)) was a 12th-century Punjabi Sunni Muslim preacher and mystic who went on to become one of the most revered and distinguished Muslim mystics of the Golden Age of Islam.  He is known reverentially as Baba Farid or Shaikh Farid by Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus of the Punjab Region, or simply as Fariduddin Ganjshakar.

Gardizi
Gardizi (Abu Sa’id Gardizi) (Abu Saʿīd Abdul-Hay ibn Dhaḥḥāk ibn Maḥmūd Gardēzī) (died c. 1061).  Persian geographer and historian of the eleventh century.  He wrote histories of the pre-Islamic kings of Persia, of the Prophet and the caliphs up to the year 1032, and a detailed history of Khurasan from the Arab conquest to 1041.

Abu Saʿīd Abdul-Hay ibn Dhaḥḥāk ibn Maḥmūd Gardēzī from Gardēz (now in Afghanistan) who wrote the book Zayn ul-Akhbār. Gardizī's work is very important for the Islamic history of Central Asia and Eastern Persia.

Gardīzī took a dispassionate view of history which is fairly remarkable for his time. For example, he does not either praise the Ghaznavids nor the coming of the Saljuqs. His style of Persian is simple but mature and provides one of the classical examples of Persian prose-writing.

Abu Sa’id Gardizi see Gardizi
Abu Saʿīd Abdul-Hay ibn Dhaḥḥāk ibn Maḥmūd Gardēzī see Gardizi
Gardezi, Abu Saʿīd Abdul-Hay ibn Dhaḥḥāk ibn Maḥmūd see Gardizi

Gaspirali
Gaspirali (Isma‘il Gaspirali) (Isma‘il Gasprinski) (Isma'il Gasprali) (İsmail Gasprinsky) (March 8, 1851 - September 11, 1914).  Crimean Tatar intellectual, educator, publisher and politician. He was one of the first Muslim intellectuals in the Russian Empire, who realized the need for education and cultural reform and modernization of the Turkic and Islamic communities. His last name comes from the town of Gaspra in Crimea.

Gaspirali advocated Pan-Turkism, preaching unity in language, thought and action.  He was also a leading advocate of socioeconomic change and cultural transformation designed to restore the competitive ability of Muslim communities, especially in Russia, vis-a-vis the West in particular.  Through the vehicles of education, for which he pursued substantial reforms of the traditional curriculum and pedagogy, and publishing -- his newspaper Tercuman (The Interpreter) appeared from 1883 until 1918 -- Gaspirali sought to alter the consciousness of his co-religionists and to inform them of both the roots of and the remedies for their current social malaise.  Drawing upon a syncretic view of human culture, he strove to combine the best of Islamic and Western achievements to create the possibility of Dar ul-Islam (“the world of Islam”) once again playing a major role in human social development. 

Gaspirali’s thought and activity were central to the emergence of a broad movement of change among Russian Muslims called Jedidism, from usul-i jedid (“the new method”), originally applied to the phonetic approach to language extended to a wide range of issues touching upon most significant aspects of Muslim life.  Axiomatic to Jedidism, as propounded by Gaspirali, were attitudes typical of the spirit of the European Enlightenment: unbounded faith in progress and its beneficial social effects; belief in the value of science; commitment to secularization; and, above all, dedication to the rational ordering of society.  From this intellectual base, Gaspirali moved beyond educational reform to propose creation of a common Turkic language to enhance communications and unity among most Muslims within Russia (and Turkey); emancipation of women, so as to involve the “other half” of Muslims in socially productive activities outside familial life; and economic development, in order to ensure a prosperous and independent society.

Gaspıralı also initiated a new journal for women, Alem-i Nisvan (World of Women), edited by his daughter Şefiqa, as well as a publication for children, Alem-i Subyan (World of Children). Gaspıralı was one of the founders of Union of Muslims (İttifaq-i Müslimin), created in 1907 and uniting members of intelligentsia from various Muslim Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire. He was also one of the main organizers of first All-Russian Muslim congresses, aimed at introducing social and religious reforms among the Muslim peoples of Russia.

He also inspired the movement known as Jadidism.
Isma‘il Gaspirali see Gaspirali
Isma‘il Gasprinski see Gaspirali
Isma'il Gasprali see Gaspirali
Gasprali, Isma'il see Gaspirali
Gasprinski, Isma‘il  see Gaspirali
Gasprinsky, Ismail see Gaspirali

Gaykhatu
Gaykhatu (Gaikhatu) (d. 1295).  Fifth Ilkhanate ruler in Iran. He reigned from 1291 to 1295. During his reign, Gaykhatu was a noted dissolute. His Buddhist baghshi gave him the Tibetan name Rinchindorj.  His name means "amazing/surprising" in the Mongolian language as in "gaikhakh" (to get surprised).

Gaykhatu had originally been governor of Seljuk Anatolia, and was nominated for the throne by an influential Mongol commander, Ta'achar, who had murdered Gaykhatu's brother Arghun and intended to promote Baydu, but Baydu didn't show up at the quriltai, so Gaykhatu was enthroned instead. He was to care for a princess by the name of Koekecin. Gaykhatu's wife, Padshah Hatun, was the daughter of Kitlugh Turkan (Turkan Khatun) and Kirman. Padshah took the title Safwad al dunya wa al-Din (literally, Purity of the earthly world and of the faith) after Djalal da-Din Abu'l-Muzzafar was deposed as head of the Mongol tribe, who reigned in southeastern Iran. Padshah was known for killing her stepbrother, Suyurghatamish, but one of his clansmen, Khurdudjin, managed to avenge her by putting her to death with permission from Baydu during his reign as Ilkhan.

Gaykhatu is known to have spent government money in an extravagant way. Among his beneficiaries were the Nestorian Christians, who praised him abundantly for his gifts to the Church, as apparent in the history of Mar Yahballaha III.

In 1294, Gaykhatu had wanted to replenish his treasury emptied by royal extravagance and a great cattle plague. In response, his vizier Ahmed al-Khalidi proposed the introduction of a recent Chinese invention called Chao (paper money). Gaykhatu agreed and called for Kublai Khan's ambassador Bolad in Tabriz. After the ambassador showed how the system worked, Gaykhatu printed banknotes which imitated the Chinese ones so closely that they even had Chinese words printed on them. The Muslim confession of faith was printed on the banknotes as a sop to local sentiment.

The plan was to get his subjects to use only paper money, and allow Gaykhatu to control the treasury. The experiment was a complete failure, as the people and merchants refused to accept the banknotes. Soon, bazaar riots broke out, and economic activities came to a standstill. Gaykhatu had no choice but to withdraw the use of paper money.

Gaykhatu was assassinated shortly after that, strangled by a bowstring so as to avoid bloodshed.[4] His cousin Baydu, another puppet placed by Ta'achar, succeeded Gaykhatu but only lasted a few months before himself being assassinated.

Gaylani
Gaylani (Rashid Ali al-Gaylani) (Sayyad Rashid Ali al-Gillani) (Sayyad Rashid Ali al-Gailani) (Sayyad Rashid Ali el Keilany) (1892–August 28, 1965). Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Iraq on three occasions. He is chiefly remembered as an Arab nationalist that attempted to remove the British influence from Iraq. During his brief tenures as Prime Minister in 1940 and 1941, he attempted to negotiate settlements with the Axis powers during World War II in order to counter British influence in Iraq.

Rashid Ali was born as the son of Sayyad Abdul Wahhab al-Gaylani into the prominent Baghdad-based Gaylani family. The Sunni Muslim Gaylani were known as sadeh, signifying that they were a family of religion that traced their ancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad. He was also related to Iraq's first Prime Minister, Abd al-Rahman al-Kayyali, though the two parts of the family were estranged.  Rashid Ali enrolled in law school in Baghdad and became a lawyer prior to his political activism.

In 1924, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani began his career in politics in the first government led by Prime Minister Yasin al-Hashimi. Yasin al-Hashimi appointed Gaylani as the Minister of Justice. The two men were ardent nationalists and were opposed to any British involvement in the internal politics of Iraq. They rejected the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty signed by the government of Prime Minister Nuri as-Said in 1930. They formed the Party of National Brotherhood to promote nationalist aims. Gaylani served as Prime Minister for the first time in 1933 but held office for less than eight months.

On March 31, 1940, when Gaylani was again appointed Prime Minister, World War II had started and Iraq had just experienced the premature death of King Ghazi. Ghazi's reign was followed by a Regency for his four-year-old son who was then the new King Faisal II. Faisal's regent was Ghazi's uncle, Emir Abdul-Illah. While Abdul-Illah supported Britain in the war, he was unable to control Gaylani, who used the war to further his own nationalist goals by refusing to allow troops to cross through Iraq to the front. He also rejected calls that Iraq break its ties with Fascist Italy and sent his Justice Minister, Naji Shawkat, to meet with the then German ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, to win German support for his government.

Britain responded with severe economic sanctions against Iraq. Meanwhile, news of British victories against Italian forces in North Africa dulled support for Gaylani's government, and, on January 31, 1941, under pressure from Regent Abdul-Illah, he resigned his post as Prime Minister. This only exacerbated his mistrust of Britain and its supporters in the government. Together with the members of the Golden Square, Gaylani made plans to assassinate Regent Abdul-Illah and seize power. On March 31, Abdul Illah discovered the plot to assassinate him and fled the country. On April 1, the coup d'état was launched, and, on April 3, Gaylani returned to power as Prime Minister. As one of his first acts, he sent an Iraqi artillery force to confront the RAF base situated in Habbaniya, RAF Habbaniya. By the end of April, the Iraqi armed forces were situated in strong positions on the escarpment above the base and a siege began.

Iraq had been a major supplier of petroleum to the Allied war effort and represented an important landbridge between British forces in Egypt and India. To secure Iraq, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered General Archibald Wavell to protect the air base at Habbaniya. On April 18, British forces from India landed in Basra, Sabine Force. In the British Mandate of Palestine, another force was created to enter Iraq from the west and relieve RAF Habbaniya, Habbaniya Force.

At Habbaniya, the besieging Iraqis demanded the cessation of all training activities and of all flights in and out of the base. On May 2, the commander at RAF Habbaniya, Air Vice-Marshal Harry George Smart, responded to the Iraqi demands by launching a pre-emptive strike against the Iraqi forces overlooking the air base. This action initiated the Anglo-Iraqi War. Within a week, the Iraqis abandoned the escarpment. By mid-May, British forces from Habbaniya had moved on to Fallujah and, after overcoming Iraqi resistance there, moved on to Baghdad. On May 29, fearing a British onslaught, Gaylani fled to Persia. Before he left Baghdad, Gaylani contacted Mulla Effendi and informed him that he had chosen his house as a safe haven for the Royal family to stay until the conflict ended.

On May 31, an armistice between the British and the Iraqis was signed. On June 3, the Regent returned to Baghdad and his government was restored.

Gaylani was not to stay long in Persia. On August 25, 1941, armed forces of the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union invaded Persia and removed the pro-German Shah Reza Shah. Gaylani now fled to Nazi occupied Europe. In Berlin, he was received by German dictator Adolf Hitler and he was recognized as the leader of the Iraqi government in exile. Upon the defeat of Germany, Gaylani again fled and found refuge this time in Saudi Arabia.

Gaylani only returned from exile after the revolution that overthrew the Iraqi monarchy in 1958. Once again he attempted to seize power, and plotted a revolt against Abdul Karim Kassem's government. The revolt was foiled and Gaylani was sentenced to death. Later pardoned, he returned to exile in Beirut, Lebanon, where he died in 1965.

Rashid Ali al-Gaylani see Gaylani
al-Gaylani, Rashid Ali see Gaylani
Sayyid Rashid Ali al-Gillani see Gaylani
Gillani, Sayyid Rashid Ali al- see Gaylani
Sayyad Rashid Ali el-Keilany see Gaylani
Keilany, Sayyad Rashid Ali el- see Gaylani

Gayo
Gayo.  The Gayo live primarily in the highland areas of the province of Aceh, Indonesia.  From sixty to seventy percent live near the town of Takengon in the regency of Central Aceh.  Increasingly large numbers have moved to cities elsewhere in Indonesia, principally Banda Aceh, Medan and Jakarta.  They are totally Sunni Muslim. 

The term “Gayo” is used by Gayo and others to refer both to a people and to their language, Bahasa Gayo of the Western Malayo-Polynesian group.  Acehnese sources indicate that Gayo was already a distinct ethnic term by the sixteenth century, and an ethnohistorical perusal of Gayo and Acehnese traditions suggests that Islamization of the area was well under way by the seventeenth century.

Modernist Islam entered Gayo in the late 1920s through west Sumatran traders, but several Gayo ulama soon thereafter attended reformist leaning schools in Aceh and Surabaya.  Takengon soon became the center for the reformist group (kaum muda) which sought to change traditional practices deemed to be contrary to the tenets of Islam, including the traditions and legal norms governing marriage, inheritance and divorce.  Whereas the Dutch administration sought to remake Gayo adat in accord with its legal views, the reformists argued that Islamic law should be applied to Gayo society through a judicial body independent of adat specialists and traditional rulers.

Shortly after independence (1945), a separate Islamic court, the Mahkamah Syariah, was established in Takengon and began to hear inheritance and divorce cases.  The impact of the court was most felt in its strict application of Islamic inheritance law, which allots shares to both sons and daughters at a ratio of two to one.

Although there are no written sources for the history of Islam in Gayo, indigenous traditions and the long-term Acehnese suzerainty indicate that the Gayo have been Muslims for at least three centuries.  Although one Acehnese account claims that the Gayo fled upriver from the coast to avoid becoming Muslim, this refusal to become Muslim, were it to have occurred, would have been in the early fourteenth century, at the time of the conversion of the northern coastal city states.  The story is therefore consistent with an eventual conversion of the Gayo to Islam by the time of Sultan Iskandar Muda’s reign in the early seventeenth century, when the Gayo appear to have been included in the Acehnese realm.

The entire corpus of Gayo origin stories is structured around Islamic (often originally Judeo-Christian) tales, beginning with a sea voyage by the son of the King of Rum (Constantinople), whose boat lodges on the Gayo origin mountain, to a version of Joseph and his brothers (the origin story for Isaq) and the story of Cain and Abel, which serves as the charter for man’s relation to hunting spirits.  Gayo attribute their early conversion to Islam to the missionary work of Abdurrauf, the early seventeenth century west Aceh ulama whose commentary on the Qur’an was disputably the central religious text in early Aceh. Moreover, there are no Gayo traditions or tales in which Gayo are represented as non- or pre-Islamic.  Ethnohistorically, Gayo conversion took place in the distant, murky past.  In legend, Islam is represented as present at the beginning. 

Gbagyi
Gbagyi (Gbari) (Gwari).  A subgroup of the Gbari.  The Gbagyi live in four Nigerian states: Niger, Plateau, Kaduna and Kwara.  These states form the heartland of Nigeria and constitute an area of great ethnic heterogeneity.  Gbagyi come into contact with numerous peoples, ranging from centralized Town Fulani and culturally similar Kamberi.  All Gbagyi claim to come from Bornu and to have split into their two main sections after emigrating from there.  The Gbagyi Ngenge (“True Gbagyi”) live in Plateau State near Abuja.  Perhaps ten percent of the Gbagyi Ngenge are Muslim.  The Gbagyi Yamma (“Western Gbagyi”) are centered in Niger and Kwara states.  About half of the Gbagyi Yamma are Muslim. 

Gwari people were often enslaved by some of the nearby Hausa-Fulani emirates.



Gbari see Gbagyi
Gwari see Gbagyi

Gbaya
Gbaya. The Gbaya-speaking peoples (often referred to as the Baya), are the largest ethnic grouping of east-central Cameroon and the western Central African Republic.  The various Gbaya dialects have been classified in the Eastern (sometimes called Ubangian) branch of Greenberg’s Adamawa-Eastern language sub-family, which in turn is a part of the broad Niger-Congo language grouping. 

The Gbaya first came into contact with Islam in the early 1800's as a result of the Adamawa jihad of the Fulani from northern Cameroon and northern Nigeria.  In particular, the founding of the Fulani city state of Ngaoundere in the 1830s marked the start of significant Muslim influence on the Gbaya when regular slave raids on Gbaya groups began to be launched from Ngaoundere.  The Gbaya also first came into contact with Muslim Hausa and Kanuri traders, at this time, as long distance caravans penetrated the Gbaya area in search of slaves, ivory and kola nuts.  Some of these Muslim traders settled down in the larger Gbaya villages, and in continuing their commercial activities, they were active in disseminting Islam. 

By the 1850s, a number of Gbaya leaders had established regular tribute and trade relations with the Fulani and Hausa and used these links to increase their power within their local communities.  A condition of the establishment of friendly relations between Ngaoundere and these Gbaya groups was that the Gbaya chiefs espouse Islam.  Mosques or prayer grounds were established in the larger Gbaya villages, but the influence of Islam at this period was restricted to the immediate followings of chiefs.  This process of political centralization continued throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, and in the 1890s when French and German explorers first entered this region, several relatively strong Gbaya chieftancies had developed at towns such as Bertoua, Baboua, Lokoti (near Meiganga) and Betare Oya. 

Thus, from the very outset of Gbaya contact with Islam, there has been a close association between this religion and centralized political power in Gbaya society. The association continues today in that Gbaya canton chiefs are all Muslim and mount a court display of titled officials and retainers, musicians and imams which is closely modelled on Fulani Muslim patterns.

The Gbaya live in Central African Republic, East-central Cameroon, the north of the Republic of Congo, and the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They numbered 970,000 at the end of the 20th century. They are the largest ethnic group in the Central African Republic, comprising 34% of the population there.



Baya see Gbaya.