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...legal showdown has rattled investors - one reason why Istanbul's main stock 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...
...party as a whole limits the roles of women and non-Muslims (they cannot, for example, hold the office of President). It also wishes to create a council to "guarantee that legislation adopted by the president and parliament conform with Sharia" - that is, Islamic law. For Egypt's secular rulers, such views are problematic; many believe legalizing the Brotherhood as a party would validate its views, and that any of the MB's actions would be simply cosmetic. Heritage Foundation Middle East analyst James Phillips argues that accepting the Brotherhood is too dangerous, that it will appear democratic at first...
...Laura, 23, from Milan, Italy, is part of a group that's accompanied the wooden cross - she likens it to the Olympic Torch - around Australia. They've received nothing but smiles, she says: "Australians are very welcoming." She hopes World Youth Day will provoke the secular to reflect more about faith: "Seeing all these people who come from all over the world - and it's a hard and long trip - maybe they will think, This must be something important." Maybe even as important as the football finals...
...wife had falsely promised that she was a virgin - a confession he obtained after furiously waving the new couple's spotless bedclothes before still-celebrating wedding guests. Though the decision made no mention of religion, the fact that the couple were Muslim sparked complaints that France's strictly secular state is being undermined by traditional Arab cultural strictures. The court ruling also infuriated feminists, who saw its acceptance of prior sexual experience as grounds for annulment as tantamount to treating marriage as the equivalent of a commercial transaction in which the buyer had discovered a hidden flaw in his purchase...
...banning ostensible religious symbols from public schools - a measure primarily aimed at keeping Islamic headscarves out of classrooms. And each new report of commotion - or even violence - in hospitals when Muslim husbands refuse to allow male doctors to tend to their wives sparks renewed outcry and debate that secular French society is under siege from foreign religious influences. The Conseil d'Etat's ruling may allay some of those fears-but not without generating cries of discrimination among many of France's five million Muslim...