Word: defenders
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...that skill is still in the service of a military that is, as the name says, a self-defense force - with most of the actual force provided by Japan's omnipresent American allies, treaty-bound to defend Japan. (The division of labor is obvious at Iwakuni - the U.S. keeps nearly half of the base to itself, shares most of the rest with Japan, which solely operates only 0.5% of the property.) Still, as the country's politics change to allow a more assertive foreign policy, Japan may not remain a stealth military power for long...
...independence this year, faith-based politics is further dividing the nation's ethnicities. The new mood was on display at the November party conference of Malaysia's ruling political party, the United Malays National Organization, during which one delegate spoke of his willingness to bathe in blood to defend the Malay race and religion. By December, the atmosphere was so tense that Malaysia's usually understated Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi called race relations "brittle"-even though a few weeks before he had defended his nation's reputation, telling TIME: "At the end of the day, Malaysia is still well...
...dozens of Christian house churches. Separately, a Muslim cleric in East Java was jailed for preaching in Indonesian, as opposed to the normal Arabic. In West Java, three women are serving three-year prison terms for running Christian kindergarten classes also attended by Muslim children. "Sometimes we have to defend the community's morality by force," says Sobri Lubis, spokesman for the Islamic Defenders Front (claimed membership: 5 million), which has carried out thuggish antivice raids on Jakarta nightclubs and whose spiritual leader Habib Rizieq said last November that assassinating U.S. President George W. Bush was religiously permissible...
...Such radical language is prompting a reaction. A growing group of moderate Indonesians is fighting back against the move toward puritanical interpretations of Islam's role in society. Many have formed NGOs that funnel cash to liberal mosques or distribute pamphlets calling on Indonesians to defend their more inclusive spiritual traditions. Researcher Misrawi, whose religious credentials are burnished by study at Cairo's famed Islamic Al-Azhar University, says his organization coordinates with 5,000 moderate pesantren, many of which are located in traditionally conservative regions like southern Sulawesi or West Java. The moderates admit they face a rhetorical disadvantage...
President Drew Gilpin Faust By THE CRIMSON STAFF Friday, February 09, 2007 5:01 AM We hope that Faust, even in the face of adversity, will have the courage to defend the right decision even when it is unpopular and the wisdom to recognize when an unpopular decision is wrong...