Word: muslimism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Secularism is the religion of contemporary France. And the enforcers of that faith have a new target. "Today ... we are confronted by certain Muslim women wearing the burqa, which covers and fully envelops the body and the head like a moving prison," said Andre Gerin, a Communist Party legislator who joined 57 others on Wednesday in signing a motion for a parliamentary committee to study possible legislation to ban the wearing of the traditional costume in public. Despite the fervor of Gerin and his allies, however, the burqa remains sufficiently rare in France that even the legislators railing against...
...what about the rights of Muslim women who honestly feel faith-bound to voluntarily don a burka? Or those prohibited by law from attending public school with the headscarves they wear everywhere else? Why is no one ranting about nuns' habits being "degrading" (as Gerin called the burqa), just as no one lashed out at creeping extremism when then-First Lady Bernadette Chirac covered her head during Vatican visits...
...with about 6 million practitioners, is the second largest religion in France. Its practitioners are also growing at a faster rate than Catholics. Indeed, the expanding size of Islam and fears about spreading extremism seem to have emboldened pundits and policy-makers to wade in and legislate aspects of Muslim observance and life in ways that they would be wary of doing with Catholics, Protestants or Jews...
Harsher criticism still comes from Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Leicester-based Muslim Forum. He agrees that efforts to quash extremism are needed, but says they should come from within the Muslim community. Though the government says it financed ICE at the urging of British Muslim leaders, Moghal is skeptical of that claim. "What the government is hoping to get is a state-compliant Islam - it will not happen...
Intelligence failures are more understandable today than they were in 1979. At that time, Washington stubbornly stood behind the regime of secular and autocratic Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, despite the rebirth of religious fundamentalism among millions of Iranians and their yearning for an obscure Muslim cleric living in exile: Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence officers blanketed Tehran but ignored the gathering storm. It was a massive blunder. Khomeini swept into power and transformed Middle East politics and alliances. His supporters seized the American compound and its occupants, an act that has frozen bilateral relations in a state...