Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...alcohol-governing rules that remain on the books, some of the most extreme are known as "blue laws," which outlaw certain "secular" activities on Sunday (like enjoying a pint of ale). The term, according to some historians, comes from the color of the paper used to print the first decrees, in New Haven, Conn. Others believe it refers to blue's use as an 18th century slang term for "rigidly moral." If you were a settler in the 1700s, Sunday was a day to rest and honor the Sabbath, nothing less and (definitely) nothing more. It wasn't just alcoholic...
...terrorism loomed over Xinjiang after a series of attacks and bombings hit the province during the build-up to last year's Beijing Olympics. The extent of the ETIM's tactical capabilities and its connections to other more prominent terrorist outfits remains unclear. Other exiled Uighur movements are avowedly secular, such as the World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer, accused by Beijing of fomenting the recent riots...
Intelligence failures are more understandable today than they were in 1979. At that time, Washington stubbornly stood behind the regime of secular and autocratic Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, despite the rebirth of religious fundamentalism among millions of Iranians and their yearning for an obscure Muslim cleric living in exile: Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence officers blanketed Tehran but ignored the gathering storm. It was a massive blunder. Khomeini swept into power and transformed Middle East politics and alliances. His supporters seized the American compound and its occupants, an act that has frozen bilateral relations in a state...
...Iranian reform movement are quite visible, quite vocal and quite well endowed, technologically. But they're not a majority. We keep missing that." Rutgers University professor Hooshang Amirahmadi fears that policymakers will focus more on the election than on the larger struggle of a new class of secular nationalists to break the bonds of theocratic rule. "The movement is moving beyond the framework that the Islamic Republic has set for itself," Amirahmadi says. "It's no longer a struggle between factions in the system...
...locals about Sarajevo's Islamic resurgence and most rush to point out that the city is still mainly secular. People continue to pack its many bars, and plenty of women wear revealing outfits. At the King Fahd mosque, Nezim Halilovic, a former war commander who delivers the Friday sermons to thousands of worshippers, says that the city is simply experiencing the kind of religious feeling that was impossible under the communist rule of the former Yugoslavia's leader, Josip Broz Tito. Like others in Sarajevo, Halilovic also accuses Serb politicians of falsely portraying Sarajevo as a hub of militant Islam...