Word: muslimism
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...index has fallen 40% this year - and has exacerbated a sense of polarization that pits democratic principles against secular ones. "This is a very dangerous situation," says Sahin Alpay, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University. "People who feel their way of life is threatened by the conservative Muslim majority want to stick with secularism rather than full democracy - and they aren't calculating the costs...
That has not stopped the Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed, socially conservative Islamist party, from winning one-fifth of the seats in parliament with its members running as unaffiliated independents. Despite the legal roadblocks - Cairo decries the MB's history of terror - the party has proven popular at the grassroots level (its social organizations provide education and health services in the communities that the government does not reach). And so, when seats in what were presumably MB strongholds became vacant in 2005, the government found several legal reasons to postpone elections. Until last weekend...
Almost as soon as the Ministry of the Interior announced the snap election on July 2nd, the Brotherhood suffered harrassment and arrest: an estimated 50 Muslim Brothers are believed to have been taken into custody. The MB, nevertheless, managed to field candidates for three of the four open seats. The districts, according to Reuters, saw only a "trickle" of voters at the polling stations on July 13. The next day the government declared victory. The MB pronounced the results fraudulent...
...dynastic candidate, but he is not a member of the officer corps, from which every leader since the 1950s has emerged. There is no other obvious alternative. Meanwhile, the rapidly expanding, impoverished and young population of Egypt will continue to gravitate toward the outlaw appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood...
...Though the overturning of the Lille verdict removes the risk non-virgin Muslim brides could find themselves dragged to court on fraud charges by infuriated husbands, the cultural pressures some face remain sufficiently great that many will continue turning to hymenoplasty to restore the semblance of chastity. Many times, however, the ruse may all be for naught: Saint-Leger notes notes that 30% to 40% of both original and reconstructed hymens fail to produce the virginity-confirming bleeding when ruptured by penetration, anyway...