Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...parking lots, even on a glorious Sunday afternoon, aren't nearly as crowded as the should be. There's also a noticeable dearth of headscarves and Hummers. Most Lebanese who ski are either Christians (Faraya is deep in the Christian highlands) or Muslims who tend towards the stylish and secular. But the resort typically attracts many tourists from the Gulf and neighboring Arab countries, who have more traditional tastes: they like their cars big and their women covered...
...visitors, which is a tragedy, for Syria makes the rest of the world's raciest lingerie seem staid by comparison. "In Syria lingerie is manufactured by very conservative religious families for a religiously conservative clientele," says Halasa. Where frank sexuality and skimpy outerwear are commonplace, such as in the secular West, there is no need to "manufacture lingerie as racy and inventive as this," she theorizes...
...Zionism. Verse 12:3 in Genesis reads, "I will bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse Israel." Since Israel's foundation in 1948, many evangelicals have seen Jews as the chosen people and modern Israel as the embodiment of God's plan. This grates on more secular Jews, who don 't go in for God talk. We know ourselves too well to suppose we are chosen. And some of us (especially us Israelis) have cursed Israel more than once. Thus Evangelical Christians may love us for the wrong reasons...
...miles from the Iranian border. U.S. Navy SEALs have trained teams to guard the Caspian's underwater pipelines, and U.S. Customs agents have overseen border and airport security systems. With Baku just a couple of hours' drive from Iran, "Azerbaijan could be the world's only secular country with a Shi'ite majority," says the State Department official...
Azerbaijan might be secular, but it is hardly democratic. Local elections in 2005 and the presidential vote that brought Ilham Aliyev to power in 2003 were both flawed, according to U.N. and American election observers. A free press? Hardly. One afternoon in December, TIME's team was taken to a police station near Baku and questioned for three hours about our activities. In Baku, the late former President's face peers down from billboards, and a huge statue of him stands in one of the many Heydar Aliyev parks. On the third anniversary of Aliyev's death, in December, government...