Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...move him to another post. Barroso didn't budge. Unless a compromise can be found?or one side backs down?the dispute could scuttle the entire 25 - member European Commission before it even takes office, as scheduled, on Nov. 1. The episode is a reminder of how, despite the secular values professed by many Europeans, church and state can still clash?with powerful and unpredictable results...
...about 20 men loyal to Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev. Unlike other Chechens fighting purely for their republic's independence, the Wahhabis want to create an Islamic state across the Caucasus and are almost fundamentalist in their outlook. They are deeply critical of the easygoing approach of more secular Chechen Muslims - and they are feared for their ruthlessness. The leader of this Wahhabi Jamaat is Jamal, a former welder in his forties. His past alcoholism shows on his ravaged face. The apartment is hot and muggy, the plastic sheets that serve as windows rustle in the wind and a sour...
...State girl with a penchant for Bible studies and heavy makeup. I was an East Coast public school kid with secular parents and a socialist bent. Aside from my father, who registered with the G.O.P. every year “to vote against the crazies [read: the religious right],” I’d never met a real Republican before, not to mention a member of the religious right. These people existed for me mainly in legend, caricatured to the point that, had Barrett pasted a Swastika on her wall next to her Degas posters, I wouldn?...
...been largely marginalized by the central government's conciliatory approach. Bangkok pumped development funds into the south, started governing through local leaders, including Muslims, and pardoned a host of insurgents. Relative calm returned, until this year. Now, say experts, what used to be a nationalist agenda pursued by essentially secular groups has been hijacked by Islamic radicalism. "In the post-9/11 world, there is no such thing anymore as a local Muslim struggle," says Rohan Gunaratna, author of the book Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror and who is assembling a database on extremist Islamic groups in Southeast...
...irony is that religious/sexual conservatives get to be in condoned sexual relationships years before more secular and modern religious types. What a bizarre axis of further division. In fact, celebrated and sanctioned sexuality might be one department in which biological determinism has something going for it: The existence of religious young people’s physical desires might be swept under the rug but the wedding plans dance highly visibly atop. At the same time, the less traditionally religious folks among us can choose to either ignore their hormones or take the so-called “ungodly?...