BRUSSELS — The move to break up Belgium gathered pace on Sunday as a separatist won an emphatic election victory in Flanders, the more prosperous Dutch-speaking region of the divided nation.
A stunning electoral success for Bart de Wever’s Flemish nationalist party, which won the most parliamentary seats, is a significant new challenge to the fragile unity of a federal country where tensions between French and Dutch speakers run deep, and where voters in one region cannot vote for parties in the other.
It has also injected a new element of uncertainty into Europe at an especially difficult time for the European Union, struggling with serious problems over its finances and currency.
Belgium is due to assume the rotating presidency of the European Union in less than three weeks. But it is likely to take months to negotiate a new coalition, raising the prospect that Belgium will be struggling to assemble its own government at precisely the time it is supposed to be steering Europe out of a deep crisis.
In 2007, after the last general election, it took the Belgians roughly nine months to form a coalition government, a measure of the centrifugal forces threatening to destroy the already-loose federal state, or to make it even less relevant than it is today.
“We are close to the abyss,” said Lieven de Winter, professor of politics at the Université Catholique de Louvain. “Whether we are five meters or five centimeters away is difficult to say. But Belgians are at a crossroads where they are making a choice on whether they want to live together or not.”
Claiming victory on Sunday evening, Mr. de Wever said that it was too soon for independence, which he favors, for Flanders, the northern part of the country where 60 percent of the population lives. He promised to reach out to French speakers, even as he demanded radical reform of the federal state.
“Don’t be afraid,” he told Belgians. “Have faith in yourselves.”
Mr. de Wever, a 39-year-old political writer, said he would not seek the post of prime minister, which might frighten Francophones, but preferred to concentrate on negotiating “a deal” to reform the state and its finances.
Final results early Monday gave his New Flemish Alliance 27 of the 150 seats in Parliament, a gain of 19 seats, just ahead of the French Socialists, with 26 seats, a gain of six. The Flemish- and French-speaking voters elect different parties, but there is a Flemish Socialist Party as well.
In addition to Mr. de Wever’s party, which got nearly 30 percent of the vote, Flanders gave 12.5 percent of its vote to the far-right separatists of Vlaams Belang and about 4 percent to another populist party, meaning that nearly half of the Flemish electorate voted for separatists. Mr. de Wever’s success appeared to come at the expense of the Christian Democrats of the current prime minister and his Liberal allies.
In French-speaking Wallonia and the capital, Brussels, the French Socialists won about 36 percent of the vote. Their leader, Elio di Rupo, may be asked to become prime minister, which would make him the first Francophone prime minister since 1974.
Perhaps Mr. de Wever’s greatest success has been to make the cause of independence respectable. Other separatist parties like Vlaams Belang were identified with the extremist and xenophobic far-right, which limited their appeal.
By contrast Mr. de Wever is a mainstream politician who argues for the gradual, slow death of Belgium, rather than its immediate dismemberment. “We do not want a revolution,” he said in Brussels last week. “We do not want to declare Flanders independent overnight. But we do believe in a gradual evolution.”
Belgium’s 180-year history contains many of the seeds of today’s difficulties. French-speakers in Wallonia dominated the country for much of the last century. The resentments of Dutch speakers in Flanders, who remember being treated as second-class citizens, run deep. As Wallonia’s traditional industries like coal and steel have declined, the Flemish increasingly feel that they are subsidizing the less productive south.
The parallel political system, in which each region has its own parties, reinforces the divisions. Politicians on either side increasingly have little in common, but have to form a federal coalition anyway.
Though the Czech Republic and Slovakia managed a “velvet divorce” in 1993, such a feat would be more difficult for Belgium, which would have to find a solution for Brussels, a largely French-speaking city that is also the capital of Flanders. Brussels is home to the headquarters of the European Union and of NATO.
While the two regional governments have considerable autonomy, the Flemish parties want to decentralize authority over justice, health, social security, taxation and labor, while the poorer French speakers fear losing federal social security protections.
Few symbols of Belgian unity remain, other than the royal family, the cartoon character Tintin and Brussels itself. There is a national soccer team, but it did not qualify for the World Cup.
Stephen Castle reported from Brussels, and Steven Erlanger from Paris.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection.
But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.
“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.
“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”
The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.
It is well known that Somalia’s radical Islamist insurgents are plucking children off soccer fields and turning them into fighters. But Awil is not a rebel. He is working for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, a critical piece of the American counterterrorism strategy in the Horn of Africa.
According to Somali human rights groups and United Nations officials, the Somali government, which relies on assistance from the West to survive, is fielding hundreds of children or more on the front lines, some as young as 9.
Child soldiers are deployed across the globe, but according to the United Nations, the Somali government is among the “most persistent violators” of sending children into war, finding itself on a list with notorious rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Somali government officials concede that they have not done the proper vetting. Officials also revealed that the United States government was helping pay their soldiers, an arrangement American officials confirmed, raising the possibility that the wages for some of these child combatants may have come from American taxpayers.
United Nations officials say they have offered the Somali government specific plans to demobilize the children. But Somalia’s leaders, struggling for years to withstand the insurgents’ advances, have been paralyzed by bitter infighting and are so far unresponsive.
Several American officials also said that they were concerned about the use of child soldiers and that they were pushing their Somali counterparts to be more careful. But when asked how the American government could guarantee that American money was not being used to arm children, one of the officials said, “I don’t have a good answer for that.”
Many human rights groups find this unacceptable, and President Obama himself, when this issue was raised during his campaign, did not disagree.
“It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land,” he said.
All across this lawless land, smooth, hairless faces peek out from behind enormous guns. In blown-out buildings, children chamber bullets twice the size of their fingers. In neighborhoods by the sea, they run checkpoints and face down four-by-four trucks, though they can barely see over the hood.
Somali government officials admit that in the rush to build a standing army, they did not discriminate.
“I’ll be honest,” said a Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject, “we were trying to find anyone who could carry a gun.”
Awil struggles to carry his. It weighs about 10 pounds. The strap digs into his bony shoulders, and he is constantly shifting it from one side to the other with a grimace.
Sometimes he gets a helping hand from his comrade Ahmed Hassan, who is 15. Ahmed said he was sent to Uganda more than two years ago for army training, when he was 12, though his claim could not be independently verified. American military advisers have been helping oversee the training of Somali government soldiers in Uganda.
“One of the things I learned,” Ahmed explained eagerly, “is how to kill with a knife.”
Children do not have many options in Somalia. After the government collapsed in 1991, an entire generation was let loose on the streets. Most children have never sat in a classroom or played in a park. Their bones have been stunted by conflict-induced famines, their psyches damaged by all the killings they have witnessed.
“What do I enjoy?” Awil asked. “I enjoy the gun.”
Like many other children here, the war has left him hard beyond his years. He loves cigarettes and is addicted to qat, a bitter leaf that, for the few hours he chews it each day, makes grim reality fade away.
He was abandoned by parents who fled to Yemen, he said, and joined a militia when he was about 7. He now lives with other government soldiers in a dive of a house littered with cigarette boxes and smelly clothes. Awil does not know exactly how old he is. His commander says he is around 12, but birth certificates are rare.
Awil gobbles down greasy rice with unwashed hands because he does not know where his next meal is coming from. He is paid about $1.50 a day, but only every now and then, like most soldiers. His bed is a fly-covered mattress that he shares with two other child soldiers, Ali Deeq, 10, and Abdulaziz, 13.
“He should be in school,” said Awil’s commander, Abdisalam Abdillahi. “But there is no school.”
Ali Sheikh Yassin, vice-chairman of Elman Peace and Human Rights Center in Mogadishu, said that about 20 percent of government troops (thought to number 5,000 to 10,000) were children and that about 80 percent of the rebels were. The leading insurgent group, which has drawn increasingly close to Al Qaeda, is called the Shabab, which means youth in Arabic.
“These kids can be so easily brainwashed,” Mr. Ali said. “They don’t even have to be paid.”
One of the myriad dangers Awil faces is constant gunfire between his squad and another group of government soldiers from a different clan. The Somali government is racked by divisions from the prime minister’s office down to the street.
“I’ve lost hope,” said Sheik Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a defense minister who abruptly quit in the past week, like several other ministers. “All this international training, it’s just training soldiers for the Shabab,” he added, saying defections had increased.
“Go ask the president what he’s accomplished in the past year,” Sheik Yusuf said, laughing. “Absolutely nothing.”
Advisers to President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed say they have fine-tuned their plans for a coming offensive, making it more of a gradual military operation to slowly take the city back from the insurgents.
Awil is eager for action. His commanders say he has already proven himself fighting against the Shabab, who used to bully him in the market.
“That made me want to join the T.F.G.,” he said. “With them, I feel like I am amongst my brothers.”
Sarah Ahmed prays at the Islamic Center of New Mexico as her niece, Khadijah Leseman, 6, stays close. Ms. Ahmed, an American Muslim, began wearing the veil after 9/11. More Photos »
By LORRAINE ALI
ALBUQUERQUE
HEBAH AHMED assessed the weather before she stepped out of her minivan. “It’s windy,” she said with a sigh, tucking a loose bit of hair into her scarf. Her younger sister, Sarah, watched out the window as dust devils danced across the parking lot. “Oh, great,” she said, “I’m going to look like the flying nun.”
Hebah, who is 32, and Sarah, 28, do wear religious attire, but of the Islamic sort: a loose outer garment called a jilbab; a khimar, a head covering that drapes to the fingertips; and a niqab, a scarf that covers most of the face. Before the shopping trip, they consulted by phone to make sure they didn’t wear the same color. “Otherwise, we start to look like a cult,” Sarah explained.
When Hebah yanked open the van’s door, the wind filled her loose-fitting garments like a sail. Her 6-year-old daughter, Khadijah Leseman, laughed. Hebah unloaded Khadijah and her 2-year-old son, Saulih, while struggling to hold her khimar and niqab in place.
The wind whipped Sarah’s navy-blue jilbab like a sheet on a clothesline as she wrangled a shopping cart. Her 3-year-old son, Eesa Soliman, stayed close at her side, lost in the billowing fabric.
If the sisters were aware that all eyes were on them, they gave no signs. In the supermarket, they ignored the curious glances in the produce section, the startled double takes by the baked goods and the scowls near the cereal. They glided along the aisles, stopping to compare prices on spaghetti sauce.
Two Hispanic children gasped and ran behind their mother. “Why are they dressed that way?” the girl asked her mother in Spanish. “Islam,” the woman said, also telling the child that the women were from Saudi Arabia.
Hebah, who is from Tennessee, smiled at the girl, but all that could be seen of her face were the lines around the eyes that signaled a grin. After nearly a decade under the veil, she and her sister know full well that they are a source of fascination — and many other reactions — to those around them.
Hebah said she has been kicked off planes by nervous flight attendants and shouted down in a Wal-Mart by angry shoppers who called her a terrorist. Her sister was threatened by a stranger in a picnic area who claimed he had killed a woman in Afghanistan “who looked just like” her. When she joined the Curves gym near her home in Edgewood, N.M., some members threatened to quit. “They said Islamists were taking over,” Ms. Ahmed said.
Her choice to become so identifiably Muslim even rattled her parents, immigrants from Egypt.
“I was more surprised than anything,” said her father, Mohamed Ahmed, who lives in Houston with her mother, Mervat Ahmed. He said he raised his daughters with a deep sense of pride about their Muslim background, but nevertheless did not expect them to wear a hijab, a head scarf, let alone a niqab.
Raised in what she described as a “minimally religious” household by parents who wore typical American clothes, Hebah used to think that women who wore a niqab were crazy, she said.
“It looked like they were suffocating,” she said. “I thought, ‘There’s no way God meant for us to walk around the earth that way, so why would anyone do that to themselves?’ ” Now many people ask that same question of her.
HEBAH AHMED (her first name is pronounced HIB-ah) was born in Chattanooga, raised in Nashville and Houston, and speaks with a slight drawl. She played basketball for her Catholic high school, earned a master’s in mechanical engineering and once worked in the Gulf of Mexico oilfields.
She is not a Muslim Everywoman; it is not a role she would ever claim for herself. Her story is hers alone. But she was willing to spend several days with a reporter to give an idea of what American life looks like from behind the veil, a garment that has become a powerful symbol of culture clash.
All that’s visible of Ms. Ahmed when she ventures into mixed company are her deep brown eyes, some faint freckles where the sun hits the top of her nose, and her hands. She used to leave the house in jeans and T-shirt (she still can, under her jilbab), but that all changed after the 9/11 attacks. It shook her deeply that the people who had committed the horrifying acts had identified themselves as Muslims.
“I just kept thinking ‘Why would they do this in the name of Islam?’ ” she said. “Does my religion really say to do those horrible things?”
So she read the Koran and other Islamic texts and began attending Friday prayers at her local Islamic Center. While she found nothing that justified the attacks, she did find meaning in prayers about strength, piety and resolve. She saw them as guideposts for navigating the world.
“I was really questioning my life’s purpose,” Ms. Ahmed said. “And everything about the bigger picture. I just wasn’t about me and my career anymore.”
She also reacted to a backlash against Islam and the news that many American Muslim women were not covering for fear of being targeted. “It was all so wrong,” she said. She took it upon herself to provide a positive example of her embattled faith, in a way that was hard to ignore.
So on Sept. 17, 2001, she wore a hijab into the laboratory where she worked, along with her business attire.
“A co-worker said, ‘You need to wrap a big ol’ American flag around your head so people know what side you’re on,’ ” Ms. Ahmed said. “From then on, they never let up.”
Three months later, she quit her job and started wearing a niqab, covering her face from view when in the presence of men other than her husband.
“I do this because I want to be closer to God, I want to please him and I want to live a modest lifestyle,” said Ms. Ahmed, who asked that her appearance without a veil not be described. “I want to be tested in that way. The niqab is a constant reminder to do the right thing. It’s God-consciousness in my face.”
But there were secular motivations, too. In her job, she worked with all-male teams on oil rigs and in labs.
“No matter how smart I was, I wasn’t getting the respect I wanted,” she said. “They still hit on me, made crude remarks and even smacked me on the butt a couple times.”
Wearing the niqab is “liberating,” she said. “They have to deal with my brain because I don’t give them any other choice.”
Her first run-in with public opinion came, ordinarily enough, while driving.
“A woman in the car next to me was waving, honking, motioning for me to roll down my window,” she said. “I tried to ignore her, but finally, we both had to stop at a light. I rolled down the window and braced myself. Then she said ‘Excuse me, your burqa is caught in your door.’ That broke the ice.”
Her sister Sarah started wearing a niqab around the same time, while completing her engineering degree at Rice University. The learning curve was steep; both sisters found they needed to carry straws for drinking in public, but eating was another story. Once Sarah forgot she was wearing a niqab and took a bite of an ice cream cone. “Humiliating,” she said, shaking her head.
Breathing wasn’t as difficult as they had imagined, but Hebah had a hard time contending with all the material around her.
“I kept losing things or leaving them behind,” she said. “But it’s like when you first put on high heels or a bra. It’s not the most comfortable thing, but there’s a purpose, and you believe that purpose outweighs the discomfort.”
WOMEN who cover totally, called niqabis, make up a tiny sliver of the estimated three million to seven million Muslims in the United States, yet they have come to embody much of what Westerners find foreign about Islam. Hidden under yards of cloth, they are the most visceral reminders of the differences between East and West, and an indisputable sign that Islam is weaving its way into American culture.
In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is backing a bill to ban women from publicly wearing the niqab and its more conservative cousin, the burqa, which covers the wearer’s eyes with a mesh panel. Similar legislation is being considered in Canada and Belgium.
In the United States, there have been flashpoints: in 2006, Ginnnah Muhammad, a plaintiff in a small claims case in Detroit, refused the judge’s request to take off her niqab during court proceedings and so her case was thrown out. She later found herself in front of the Michigan Supreme Court, arguing for her right to wear the niqab in court. The high court upheld the judge’s action.
Ms. Muhammad and five other American niqabis were interviewed for this article, in addition to the Ahmed sisters. All of them made the decision to wear the niqab when they were single. And, although the Muslim faith does not require women to cover their faces, all believe the niqab gave them a bit of extra credit in the eyes of God. “The more clothes you wear, the closer you are to God,” Ms. Muhammad said.
Menahal Begawala, 28, was raised in Queens, the daughter of Indian immigrants. She began covering her face at age 19. “I suppose there is some part of me that wants to make a statement, ‘I am a Muslim,’ ” she said.
She is a former grade school teacher now living in Irving, Tex. “I think I blow perceptions because I speak English, I’m educated and it’s my choice to cover,” Ms. Begawala said.
Sarah Zitterman, who as a teenager was a blond California surfer, converted to Islam after living in Zanzibar as a student. In Africa, she felt more at peace with the call to prayer than she ever did at church back home in San Diego. Now 30 and the mother of three in Fresno, Calif., Ms. Zitterman said that being white and American has made her experience under the niqab a little easier.
“It’s less scary for others,” she said. “But the hardest is when kids are frightened. If there’s no men around, I’ll uncover and say ‘Hey, I’m just a mommy — see?’ ”
Most of the niqabis interviewed said that they have received almost as much criticism at their local mosques as at their local malls. Many Muslim Americans do not like being associated with the niqab, saying it gives non-Muslims the wrong idea about their faith.
“The idea of covering one’s face is challenging, even in our community,” said Edina Lekovic, communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. “For more-mainstream Muslims, the understanding is that you dress modestly and cover everything but your hands and your face. So for a woman to choose to wear niqab is above and beyond what the Koran calls for.”
SARAH and Hebah Ahmed live only a few miles apart in Albuquerque’s East Mountains — Hebah off a winding dirt road with her children and husband, Zayd Chad Leseman, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico; Sarah in a rural geodesic dome with her son and husband, Yasser Soliman, an engineer with Intel.
Hebah and her husband, who is from Moline, Ill., met as graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. By the time they were married in 2003, he had converted to Islam and taken the first name Zayd. People were often confused by the sight of the couple, she said, because he looks like “a corn-fed, Midwestern guy, then he’s walking with this covered women who’s dark — they can tell from my eyes.” She laughed and added, “They must wonder where he bought me.”
Mr. Leseman supports his wife’s decision to wear the niqab. “I am proud of my wife’s conviction to her beliefs, but it took some adjustment being out in public with her, especially with all the stares and comments,” he said.
Once, he said, “we wanted to go to my sister’s softball game, and my mother said ‘Yeah, right! Hebah will have to stay in the van.’ People think because her face is covered that her feelings are, too.”
The sisters make the 30-minute drive to Albuquerque a few times a week to grocery shop, attend prayers at the Islamic Center of New Mexico and drink smoothies at Satellite Coffee. The trunk of Hebah’s car is filled with pamphlets on Islam, English translations of the Koran and granola bars for her children.
When it comes to dealing with the public, she is a niqabi ambassador, friendly and outgoing. “I look at those run-ins with people as an opportunity to explain who I am and maybe shed some light on Islam,” Hebah said. “If they knew me or more about my faith, I’m sure they would think differently.”
She is used to explaining that a niqab is not a burqa and that no, she doesn’t wear it at home. In an all-female setting like Curves, one would not be able to identify a niqabi among the other women in workout gear. It does get hot under the jilbab, but as Sarah explained, it is “sort of like a self-contained air-conditioning unit that circulates cool air.”
Hebah has grown so used to her attire, she often forgets she has it on. “Sometimes I’ll pass a guy who’s looking at me, and I’m like ‘Is he checking me out?’” she said. “Then I’ll catch a glimpse of myself in a window and it’s like, ‘Uh, hello, Hebah — no.’ ”
WHILE driving on Interstate 40, heading home, Ms. Ahmed wedged her cellphone between her khimar and ear, then joked, “Look, a hands-free device.” Sarah rolled her eyes.
There are many types of niqabs, Hebah explained, pulling at least a half-dozen out of her closet. Pushing aside her worn copy of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” she made room for them on the bed.
Her niqabs were made by a seamstress in Egypt whom she met while visiting extended family, but many American niqabis buy their garments online. “You can’t get them here,” Hebah said. “I mean, the ones at the back of our local halal store — hideous.”
As she rummaged through her scarves, Khadijah tied one around her waist and twirled like a ballerina. Muslim women who cover usually wait until puberty to conceal their hair and bodies in public, but Khadijah likes to wear a hijab for dress-up — especially the pink one with sparkles.
Hebah said she wanted Khadijah “to be a confident female who is not victimized or abused.” She explained: “For me, the best way to do that is to do what I’m doing, and not just because Mama told her to, but because of her conviction. At the end of the day, she has to stand in front of God alone.”
When reminded that hers is a rocky path, and it would likely be the same for her daughter, Ms. Ahmed paused, then began to cry.
“People don’t understand,” she said, wiping a tear with the edge of her sleeve. “We’re really strong, but it takes a toll on you. Sometimes you think, ‘I just want to rest.’ ”
Sarah, helping her sister out, said: “We think of paradise at that point. Heaven is where we’re supposed to rest. That’s what gets us through.”
When terrorists in the Middle East attack innocent civilians, observers in the West often ask a pained question: Where's the outrage in the Muslim world? Why don't Islamic religious authorities speak out more forcefully against the terrorists and their wealthy financiers?
It remains a potent issue: Terrorism has damaged the Islamic world far more than the West, and too many Muslims have been cowed and silent. But a powerful and so far largely unreported denunciation of terrorism emerged last month from Saudi Arabia's top religious leadership, known as the Council of Senior Ulema.
The Saudi fatwa is a tough condemnation of terror and of the underground network that finances it. It has impressed senior U.S. military commanders and intelligence officers, who were surprised when it came out. One sent me a translation of the fatwa, and Saudi officials provided some helpful background.
"There is no gray area here," said a senior Saudi official. "Once it has come out like this, from the most senior religious body in the kingdom, it's hard for a lesser religious authority to justify violence."
The fatwa already seems to have had some impact: "Negative reaction from extremists online shows that they see this as a threat that needs to be responded to," says one senior U.S. official.
The fatwa begins with a clear definition of terrorism, which it calls "a crime aiming at destabilizing security" by attacking people or property, public or private. The document goes on to list examples of this criminal activity: "blowing up of dwellings, schools, hospitals, factories, bridges, airplanes (including hijacking), oil and pipelines." It doesn't mention any geographical area where such actions might be permissible.
What's striking is that the fatwa specifically attacks financing of terrorism. The Muslim religious council said that it "regards the financing of such terrorist acts as a form of complicity to those acts . . . to bring a conduit for sustaining and spreading of such evil acts."
The fatwa goes on: "The Council rules that the financing of terrorism, the inception, help or attempt to commit a terrorist act of whatever kind or dimension, is forbidden by Islamic Sharia and constitutes a punishable crime thereby; this includes gathering or providing of finance for that end." The fatwa exempts "legitimate charity to help the poor" from this ban.
"The financier of terrorism is more often than not more dangerous than the actual terrorist, since without funds, schemes fail and things do not take place," Fahd al-Majid, the secretary general of the Senior Ulema Council, said in a May 23 interview with Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic daily.
Given the role that wealthy Saudis have played in financing radical Islamic groups, the fatwa has a significant potential impact. For Muslims in the kingdom, it has the force of law and it will provide a strong religious and legal backing for Saudi and other Arab security services as they track terrorist networks.
It will be harder, too, for renegade clerics to issue rival fatwas that contradict the Saudi Ulema. The signatories are guardians of the conservative Wahhabi school of Islam, which to observers has sometimes seemed to sympathize with the Muslim extremists. The fatwa, dated April 12 but issued publicly in May, was approved unanimously by the 19 members of the council. To implement the fatwa, the Saudi Shura Council is drafting a counterterrorism finance law.
Saudi sources say that King Abdullah initiated the process that led to the fatwa, by asking for a ruling on terrorist financing. His push on the issue contrasts with the royal family's traditional wariness of challenging or offending the clerical establishment, on which its legitimacy rests.
This growing activism partly reflects a recognition that senior members of the House of Saud are themselves prime targets of al-Qaeda. A recent example was the assassination attempt in August against Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi counterterrorism chief.
Events in Saudi Arabia are difficult for outsiders to understand, to put it mildly. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former chief of Saudi intelligence, joked in a recent speech that the kingdom's ministry of information used to be described as the "ministry of denial" because "whenever news about Saudi Arabia was reported, the ministry would deny it the following day."
What matters in Saudi Arabia and most other Muslim countries is what its political and religious leaders say to their own people in Arabic. By that measure, there's a new voice for moderation coming from the Muslim clerical establishment.
Some people may find themselves shocked by this revelation, but Google is not the be-all, end-all of search engines! Of course it does a fantastic job, though many grow frustrated with not always finding exactly what they need - maybe it ends up buried underneath a pile of useless splogs with good PR or never receives enough attention to even pop up on their radar. Fortunately, specialty search engines that appeal to a specific niche can fill in where the broader Google starts slipping. No matter their focus - though often professional, technical, or commercial in nature - they provide excellent services to help users find exactly what they need.
While it doesn’t necessarily cater to a specific topic, GoodSearch is an amazing niche search engine in that every query run through it goes through it results in a donation made to a selected charity! Those with little money or time to give the community - most especially college students - can do at least this much to help out a favorite nonprofit.
Fans of the classic t-shirt will absolutely love using the Teenormous search engine, which scours the internet to find the stores that sell exactly what they’re looking for.
Dedicated to nurturing adventure and exploration, Goby serves as a very unique travel-related search engine to help users discover what’s going on at home as well as plan vacations.
Available in 35 languages and spanning 810 universities (and counting!), SlideFinder allows students, educators, professionals, researches, and hobbyists to browse thousands of available PowerPoint presentations on a staggering array of topics.
Most visitors to USA.gov do not realize that the search engine available through the site runs queries through every state government and federal department as well. They can also browse the archives by topic as well.
In the same league as the far more popular Yelp, CitySearch, and UrbanSpoon, Local serves as a search engine to discover local businesses and eateries, pick up coupons, and read what previous customers have to say about their experiences.
Explore the world via roads, satellite images, bird’s-eye views, and 3D using National Geographic’s extensive database and search feature that compiles all of their maps into one valuable search.
Weather aficionados can search for storms in the National Climatic Data Center’s database, which categorizes all of the recorded events in every state and territory since 1993.
Use PubMed to search over 19 million articles, citations, books, journals, and other works of literature relating to the study of medicine and biology.
The computer savvy and the entirely clueless can both benefit from Webopedia, which serves as both a dictionary and a search engine for terminology relating to the internet and technology.
When looking for contact information for both people and businesses, pop into Search Bug for detailed and accurate results. Many companies use it to run quick checks on potential employees, for example.
Most internet users turn to WebMD for quick medical advice and information, but Healthline provides a similar search feature. Type in different conditions and symptoms to retrieve research and tips on the subject at hand.
Focusing on music, books, movies, and people, Gnod also boasts an AI system that remembers a user’s preferences and eventually comes to search based on these personalized parameters.
Animation fans and pop culture critics will definitely enjoy The Big Cartoon Database and search engine, which allows them to call up all the available information on thousands of different companies, films, shorts, characters, and more.
Aspiring web masters and mistresses would do well to use Ajax Whois to check the availability of specific domain names for every extension. It sure saves time typing it into the browser!
Musicians serious about starting a band will appreciate this database and search feature, which allows them to see what names have already been taken in order to avoid any legal issues or confusion amongst fans.
Rollyo’s main attraction involves allowing users to customize their own niche searches available on the front page. They can even pick which sources they do or do not want showing up in their results as well.
Biographers, journalists, or hobbyists who enjoy poking into the private lives of the entitled American elite who inexplicably receive exorbitant amounts of money for doing almost nothing can use the Celebrity Search Engine to only perpetuate the problem.
When working on a biography or genealogic project, Ancestor Hunt comes to the rescue by offering an extremely thorough obituary search for every state in America.
One of the most advanced multimedia search engines on the web, blinkx browses over 35 million hours worth of podcasts and videos to send back exactly what users need.
This highly specialized search works wonderfully for those hoping to give a teddy bear as a gift, as it allows them to browse a multitude of shops for the perfect playmate.
Fans of DIY projects and indie culture will appreciate this down-to-earth search engine and community, which seeks to spotlight some of the lesser-known people and ideas that crop up in the distant pages of a standard Google search.
Biologists and geneticists can search over 100,000 image files involving over 4,000 gene expressions specifically involving flies, making this an excellent niche resource for the zoological field.
No relation to the dog, unfortunately. But retrievr still serves an excellent and useful function all the same! Sketch in a box and add a few colors, then let the search engine do the work by popping onto Flickr and brining back ones that match the description.
Whether searching for an obscure horror film for movie night or hoping to learn more about the history of favorite spooky figures, HORRORFIND will likely fetch something entertaining and informative.
Before popping in or streaming a movie, browse what professionals and hobbyists alike make of thousands of different titles. MRQE also provides a glut of information on all sorts of interesting film trivia.
Online shopping never used to allow the same personalization, comparison, and options that hitting traditional brick-and-mortar stores. However, like.com’s grand visual search engine provides nearly every benefit of leaving home to shop - aside from actually touching or trying on the products themselves.
Art lovers in search of images and information on their favorite creators and works can browse names, pieces, and museums to find everything the internet has to offer on the subject.
Use Retrevo when purchasing electronics online, as it searches different shops in order to help consumers make the right decisions when it comes to price and quality.
Check out SideStep when comparison shopping for the best travel deals possible - it makes for a viable alternative to Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, Priceline, and the like!
Dailystocks.com provides a search engine to find the latest news, developments, and information on a specific stock - making this an excellent resource for anyone looking to work with investments.
Touting itself as “the world’s greatest Mp3 Search Engine,” SkreemR does…well…exactly that! Use it to find podcasts, music, and other sounds in that specific format.
Because the only thing better than music is free music, SeeqPod offers visitors a chance to find their favorite songs and discover new artists completely gratis.
Gamers in search of information and reviews regarding their hobby have their very own search engine to explore everything the industry has to offer them.
A service from GameFly Media, CheatServer provides exactly what its nomenclature implies. When stuck on a particularly aggravating boss or wanting to push a game to its limits, run a search through this engine and grab the useful information that comes up.
Sourcebank specifically targets developers and programmers, and their search engine specializes in finding code, articles, and other resources regarding the professions.
Another specialized shopping search engine, Slifter stands out from its competition by having users search for the best deals at physical stores in their area rather than online retailers.
Many critics point out that eBay has a search engine of its very own, but Auction Mapper actually allows users a much higher degree of flexibility and customization than the default.
In spite of its prolificacy and prowess, Google is basically the Batman of the search engine world. It may beat out all the other non-powered mortals, but it still possesses entirely human flaws and weaknesses. Fortunately, niche search engines form a great supporting network (think of them as basically Alfreds, Robins, Batwomans, Nightwings, Oracles, Batgirls, and Huntresses) to pick up where the big guy trails off. They’re perfectly capable of standing on their own and provide a valuable function to help visitors solve their own problems.
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