Word: seculare
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...personal routines, so in politics: to Khomeini the only just state is one ruled by Islamic theologians, who alone can be trusted to interpret God's commands correctly. There is no separation of church and state, or division between sacred and secular, in Islamic teaching. The Ayatullah, however, carries his theocratic vision much farther than most other Muslim scholars by insisting on the clergy's duty, not just to pass moral judgment on the acts of government, but to rule the state directly?a concept enshrined in the constitution that Iran adopted last month. The ideal Islamic government, Khomeini...
...exoticism of high price generates curiosity, and this curiosity fills the museum, turning it into a low-rating mass medium. But there it collides with an older American tradition, the 19th century reformist belief that contact with works of art is morally elevating and that museums are, in spirit, secular churches. In the eddies of this confluence, the work of art, battered and sucked this way and that by incompatible necessities, becomes simultaneously prominent and invisible. It can no longer speak as it once spoke. It is asked to become not an object of contemplation, but a spectacle...
...Fedayan, on the other hand, are a hard-line secular group with no ties of any kind to Khomeini. They were the first political group to stage marches against the government after the fall of the Shah. They sent thousands of guerrillas to fight against Khomeini's forces in Kurdistan, thereby demonstrating a capacity to put an army into the field. But they did not take part in the recent rebellion against the constitution in Tabriz. Explains a Fedayan leader: "We do not join any movement simply because it is opposed to the government. For us, what matters...
Banisadr did, however, manage to have talks with scores of prominent Azerbaijanis. In one session with 30 mullahs, he was presented with an eight-point resolution demanding that all government appointments in the region be vetted by Sharietmadari and that secular curbs be placed on the near dictatorial powers given Khomeini under Iran's new constitution. A mullah then rose and recounted acts of brutality committed in Tabriz by the revolutionary guards. Whereupon all the other mullahs wept profusely...
...million-member United Presbyterian Church and former president of the National Council of Churches. The Presbyterian brief seeks to banish the singing of Christmas music in public schools, not because it is too religious (Florey's view) but because it is not religious enough. Such music used under secular auspices, except formal music classes, Thompson feels, "debases" and "perverts" the religious significance of Christmas. Why mix Away in a Manger with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"? Thompson asks...