Word: deviant
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...what happens when the state's definition of Islam differs from its citizens'? The Islamic Development Department, which governs Muslim practices on a federal level, deems Shia and Baha'i interpretations of Islam deviant faiths worthy of forced "rehabilitation." Controversy also surrounds Malays who wish to convert to another religion, thus defying the constitutional clause specifying that all Malays must be Muslims. That issue is being tested by the case of Lina Joy, a Malay who has been barred from converting to Christianity by Shari'a courts. Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a lawyer who has received death threats for representing...
...Conservatism is actually in a classic American centrist bind. Since 1991 Reform Judaism has allowed gay rabbis and same-sex commitment ceremonies, a position probably slightly to the left of the Episcopal Church of the USA. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, regards homosexuality as deviant, and gay Orthodox Jews are as closeted as they are in, say, the Southern Baptist Convention. Until today Conservatism followed Orthodoxy?s legal lead, based in part on the biblical injunction that ?You shall not lie with a man as with a woman.? But many Conservative congregations have openly gay members, and pro-gay-rights...
...basic plotline of most of these films is that people are stuck somewhere and have to endure horrible things--or indeed, do horrible things to each other--to escape. The more deviant and repulsive the treatment, the better. Bousman, who directed the later Saw films, says he got inspiration for that meat-locker scene from shoveling the driveway during endless Kansas winters. "I always thought I was gonna die 'cause it was so cold outside," says Bousman. "What happened if you were stuck outside with no clothes on? The ideas start off in the real world, and then we take...
...governments into elaborate rubber stamps. "The separation of powers has been dismantled," says Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the very few independent liberal deputies left in the Duma. "All power belongs to the President and his administration, and 1.3 million federal bureaucrats." People don't go to jail for expressing deviant views anymore (though a bill about to pass through the Duma will soon make that possible), but organized politics have been switched off in favor of direct rule. People can watch and read what they want, but the state apparatus controls all TV news and steers most newspapers. Many nongovernmental...
...plucked out of lawless neighborhoods and put somewhere else, criminologists have found. In the more hopeful scenario, people who parachute into better neighborhoods commit less violent crime. That theory posits that places like New Orleans, where poverty is extreme, are inherently crimogenic--which is to say, they produce deviant behavior, just like alcohol. Gangs are also crimogenic. When people leave gangs, they are generally less violent than they were as gang members. In neighborhoods and gangs, in other words, violence--and peace--is contagious...