Word: secte
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...overnight, out of nothing, by plucky nobodies. The new media are scurrilous and partisan. Marketing spin and advertising extend their influence as never before. A fresh urban-youth subculture has emerged, rude and vibrant, entertainment-fixated and violence-glorifying. Christian conservatives are furiously battling cultural decadence, and one popular sect insists that the end days are nigh. Ferocious anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise. Both major American political parties seem pathetically unable to deal with the looming, urgent issue of the day. Insurgents practicing asymmetrical warfare have, practically overnight, threatened to bring down the political order of Western civilization...
Last week, two notorious speakers were invited to Cambridge to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At MIT, Dovid Weiss, a leader of the tiny, rabidly anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox sect of Judaism known as "Neturei Karta," participated in a panel sponsored by several student groups as well as by MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. And at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Norman Finkelstein, an assistant professor at DePaul University, spoke at an event sponsored by the Palestine Awareness Committee, the Society of Arab Students, and other campus groups...
...particular, the event at MIT billed Weiss as representing a "Jewish view" on foreign policy and social justice. Weiss routinely presents the Neturei Karta as representing "authentic Judaism" despite the fact that only several thousand people identify as members of the sect and that most Jews, including the Ultra-Orthodox, have strongly denounced Weiss and his associates. Finkelstein is more subtle: He harnesses his Jewish background in an attempt to bring legitimacy to his opinions. He routinely and targetedly mentions that his mother is a Holocaust survivor, and employs common Jewish expressions—such as "chutzpah...
...Thich" is an honorific held by most Vietnamese monks) have been under house arrest in their respective monasteries due to their pro-democracy stance and opposition to strict government control of religion, which was established after the communists won the war in 1975. A spokesman for the outlawed sect said he is "shocked" that Nhat Hanh is willing to work with his co-religionists' oppressors. "I believe Thich Nhat Hanh's trip is manipulated by the Hanoi government to hide its repression of the Unified Buddhist Church and create a false impression of religious freedom in Vietnam," said...
...strategy is to promote Nhat Hanh's non-political teachings in order to sideline the religion's legitimate leaders, those who stayed during the war. But Nhat Hanh's followers say that he only wants to promote Buddhism among ordinary Vietnamese and point out that both of the banned sect's leaders refused to meet with Nhat Hanh during his first visit in 2005. Quang Do rejected overtures for a meeting and when Nhat Hanh led a delegation to the monastery where Huyen Quang is confined, the UBCV patriarch locked himself in his room and refused to come...