Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...father of the nation" appellation is not simply a product of Arafat's 35 years at the helm of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), or his half-century in charge of the secular-nationalist Fatah movement he founded in 1956, and which remains the single largest party in Palestinian politics. It derives from the fact that Arafat's ascent in the national movement epitomized a Palestinian declaration of independence. Before Arafat and his comrades took charge of the PLO in 1968, the very term "Palestinian" hardly existed in the international lexicon. The fate of the Arab residents of what...
...young Americans and young Iraqis to kill each other in a continuing cycle of violence in no way furthers the antiterrorism cause. Getting rid of Saddam was a good idea. But replacing his secular dictatorship with a fundamentalist theocracy would not be so good. Iraq will probably have a civil war that will eclipse and consume any puppet democracy that the U.S. creates. Stay the course? That was our motto in Vietnam...
...evacuate settlements, and their influential rabbis back them. The plan poses a dilemma for the religious Zionist movement at the heart of the settlement project. Its early rabbis decreed that Zionism was God's work because it reclaimed the land of Israel, even if many of its leaders were secular Jews. But if the Zionist state hands over land to the Palestinians, then, as some rabbis and their followers fervently believe, the state is no longer doing God's work, but Satan...
...only sizable group within the political process that is associated with the Sunnis, the Iraqi Islamic Party, is poorly organized and scorned by the clerics for having contributed two ministers to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government. The other prominent Sunnis likely to contest the elections represent secular parties of uncertain popularity. Adnan Pachachi's Iraqi Independent Democrats, Nasser Chaderchi's National Democratic Party and Wamid Nadhmi's Arab Nationalist Movement are all maneuvering to form electoral alliances with Shi'ite and Kurdish parties rather than appeal to Sunni voters. The highest-ranking Sunni in the U.S.-backed interim...
...trouble is that secular political alliances probably won't bring out the vote in much of the Sunni triangle, where sectarian sensibilities run deep, and many Sunnis say they fear being marginalized by Shi'ite religious parties that are set to dominate the new government. Even in cosmopolitan Baghdad, many Sunnis feel they need a party that represents them exclusively. Ali Hameed, a neuropsychiatrist and worshipper at the Omar alMukhtar, describes himself as secular-minded but laments the lack of a strong Sunni party. "I would not be troubled if a Shi'ite party came to power in the elections...