Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...worst-case scenario of the past week - that Shi'ite militants will form an Islamic republic with Iranian support - is unlikely. Iraq has a significant secular middle class. The leading Iraqi ayatullah, Ali al-Sestani, believes in the separation of church and state. The Iraqi and Iranian Shi'ites have a history of mutual disdain and bloodshed. And even Iran's Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said last week that Iraq's ethnic and religious diversity makes it an improbable candidate for an Islamic republic...
...Abbas's problem isn't confined to convincing the Islamists to do an about-face - the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades are affiliated with Abbas and Arafat's own secular-nationalist Fatah faction, and they, too, have not bought into the idea of disarming in order to implement a "roadmap" in which they have no faith...
...means Iraqis can begin to come to terms with their personal losses. Baghdad, filled first with rejoicing, then recriminations, after Saddam's fall, has shifted now to bearing witness. People gather at prison gates to review their life inside, a diet of torture and starvation. Shiites describe the secular indignities imposed by Saddam. And families of the missing wander from prisoner welfare groups to empty government offices in search of answers they dared not ask when the Sunni regime was still in power...
...Dutch art was a kind of vanguard art because of its interest in naturalistic representation and secular subjects,” Robinson said. “It was always considered a kind of art apart, just as the Dutch republic was a kind of novel form of government and regarded with disdain by aristocratic and monarchical regimes. So in that sense, Dutch art was a kind of revolutionary, innovative art in the 17th century...
...observed the hundreds of thousands of Shiites performing a religious ritual in Iraq this week, you might question Wolfowitz's assumptions. In fact, Iraq's 15 million Shiites, around 65 percent of the population, are not by and large secular. They are, indeed, extremely sensitive about having holy cities of Islam on their territory. Yes, Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia, but this week's ritual was performed in Kerbala, which along with Najaf are Iraqi cities which have been venerated for 14 centuries by Shiites as the resting places of their two most revered imams, Ali and Hussein...