Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...believers--principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics--bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong--indeed, deeply un-American--about fearing people simply because they believe. It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system...
...display it? It is not just, as conventional wisdom has it, that liberals think the last election was lost because of a bloc of benighted Evangelicals. It is because we are almost four years from 9/11 and four years of moral certainty, and firm belief is about all that secular liberalism can tolerate...
...years of that near papal certainty is more than any self-respecting intelligentsia can take. The overwhelmingly secular intellectuals are embarrassed that they once nodded in assent to Morrow-like certainty, an affront to their self-flattering pose as skeptics...
...unruliness is being fueled by militant religious political groups, many of which oppose secular education and what they perceive as Western cultural influences. In March, extremist Shi'ite followers of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr beat up several hundred engineering students in the southern city of Basra. Their offense: attending a picnic at which both sexes were present. Female students have been harassed for "inappropriate" clothing; a majority now wear the hijab, or head scarf, to school-a sharp contrast to the prewar period when Islamic dress was rarely seen on campus. "We see it as our duty...
...grave problem," says Sami Mudaffar, Iraq's Minister for Higher Education. "And it's going to need unusual solutions." He's proposing, for instance, to allow a limited number of religious ceremonies on campus-provided that they include all sects. But many teachers feel the universities should be strictly secular. Geology professor Ihsan al-Rawi, president of the Association of University Teachers, warns that "the religion that is being brought into the campus by these groups is the religion of hate...