Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Revelations, like Medium and The X-Files before it, uses a believer-skeptic pairing. Sister Josepha Montifiore (Natascha McElhone) belongs to an order of nuns, at odds with the Vatican, that believes the Second Coming is imminent; her reluctant partner, Dr. Richard Massey (Bill Pullman), is a secular academic. But the series leaves no room for doubt that otherworldly events are going on. In the pilot, there is a bona fide miracle (the shadow of Christ appears on a mountainside in Mexico), a Satanist cuts off his own finger without bleeding, and a baby--who may be the Antichrist...
...election raises as many questions as it answers. What will be the precise makeup of the governing coalition? Will the government be primarily religious or secular? Will the new government, which will be charged with drafting a new constitution and with appointing a prime minister, be friendly to the U.S.? Will the new Iraqi democracy be unduly influenced by its authoritarian neighbors, including Iran? These and many other questions will have to be answered by the administration before it can declare that its experiment in enforced democratic transformation is a success...
While we earnestly hope that the new Iraqi government will be secular, pluralistic and tolerant, and will foster friendly relations with the U.S., a great deal of planning and hard work will need to be done in order to ensure this. Given the current administration’s track record thus far on long-term planning, the future of Iraq’s fledgling democracy is anything but certain. The election is a decided bright spot in our dealings with Iraq, but a difficult and dangerous road ahead remains...
...Allawi's best bet would be to draw the Kurds into his own bloc. But the Kurds, secular and seperatist, they are hardly natural allies for the moderate Islamist-nationalist UIA list assembled under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Still, they may see the Sistani list as a more viable government, if they can strike a deal that gives the Shiites the power they seek in Baghdad in exchange for de facto Kurdish independence in the northern provinces - largely at the expense of Sunni Arabs and ethnic Turkmen in Kirkuk and other contested areas. Ultimately, however, the Kurds...
...prospects for a new government has focused on the question of drawing in the alienated Sunnis in the hope of undercutting the insurgency, and of containing Kurdish independence ambitions. But those issues may yet be eclipsed by a power struggle between the Shiite coalition and the pro-U.S. secular groups headed by Allawi. The rules of the game give Allawi openings to maneuver for power even if his opponents win a clear majority of the vote and the seats in the National Assembly. But Shiite leaders - none more so than Grand Ayatollah Sistani himself - have long questioned some...