Word: secularism
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...regrouped, acquiring arms, training and a modicum of discipline with help from Iran and Lebanon's Hizballah. By the end of 2005, the Mahdi Army had grown into a formidable force. Allawi's political fortunes, meanwhile, had faded. Religious Shi'ites never forgave him for attacking the militias, and secular Iraqis accused him of leaving the job unfinished; in two general elections, he was barely able to muster 14% of the vote...
...Italy. In his provocatively titled 2007 book Viva Israel: From the ideology of death to the civilization of life, my story, he described his transformation from hating Zionists as a youth to realizing "that hatred easily comes to include all Jews, then all Christians, then all liberal and secular Muslims, and at the end all Muslims who do not want to submit to Islamic radicals' will...
Allam is the latest example of Benedict's attempts to re-engage contemporary European secular culture as well. The official Church line is that the decision for the Pope to perform the baptism himself was not extraordinary. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi emphasized that Allam was just one of seven adults baptized Saturday during an Easter vigil mass, saying that the Pope performed the rite "without making any 'difference of people,' that is, considering all equally important before the love of God and welcoming all in the community of the Church." Nonetheless, Allam's public conversion is another reminder that...
Trinity's own Roman-like architecture is unfamiliar for a church, which might explain why some outsiders found it cultish and strange. The congregation meets in a theater-in-the round, designed after secular buildings like the Parthenon and the U.S. Congress. Stained-glass windows flanking the entrance feature images of African-American leaders, not saints: W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. There is also a glass sculpture of a man resembling Obama. Above it, light streams through block-lettered words: "VOTE. We need YOU." For now at least, Trinity may offer the only refuge...
...starting times carefully choreographed so that each ends a few minutes apart, allowing CBS to show every buzzer beater or near miss. (It's the least the network could expect for the $6 billion it has ponied up to broadcast the event for just over a decade.) But for secular audiences, those first few days are also when March Madness is at its maddest, when little schools get their one shot at Goliath. Most will miss, but a few will stun the odds and themselves and in their ragged glory remind us of just how satisfying...