Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That is why wise nations try to keep the first form of terrorism from transmuting into the second. Arguably, Israel has allowed that evolution to occur. In the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization, murderous though it was, was rigorously secular and advanced a conventional agenda for national liberation. For years Israel ignored it. The newer Palestinian terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, see their cause in much more religious, millenarian terms; from Israel's standpoint, dealing with them is far more difficult...
...last week, Dostum was in campaign mode. Next month the country will hold its long-awaited loya jirga, or grand assembly, which will choose a transitional government. Dostum relaunched his old political party, the National Islamic Movement. Known simply as Jombesh, the group has a platform that rests on secular democracy (despite its name) and respect for minority rights, which translates to a federalist agenda. Addressing a congress of 2,000 party functionaries, Dostum hit out at "extremism" and "fundamentalism." Read: the Islamic politics of Jamiat...
When General Pervez Musharraf made his landmark speech denouncing Islamic extremism last January, there were hopes, even in India, that Musharraf was destined to be Pakistan's Kemal Ataturk - the nationalist general who founded a modern, secular Turkey on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. But now that terror attacks from militants based in Pakistan-controlled territory have brought the South Asian rivals to the brink of war, there's a growing fear that Musharraf may instead turn out to be Pakistan's Yasser Arafat - a domestically weak leader caught between his obligations to the West and to his neighbors...
...modern and the archaic, nowhere is the archaic more powerful than in the way the country's legal system treats women who accuse men of rape. The problem lies in the so-called Hudood ordinances, a series of Islamic decrees that are enforced in tandem with the country's secular legal system. Human rights activists say these laws blatantly discriminate against women. For a rapist to be convicted, for example, his crime has to be confirmed by four adult male Muslim eyewitnesses, or the rapist must confess. If the court rules that there was consent, the woman can be convicted...
Music has always been a great proselytizing tool, and Christian bands like P.O.D. have learned much from their secular brethren about selling themselves and their message. In look and attitude they are often indistinguishable from secular bands. P.O.D. even played on Saturday Night Live last month. "Kids have so many choices that when they buy something, it has to hit them on numerous levels," says Ron Shapiro, co-president of Atlantic Records, P.O.D.'s distributor. "It's about the music and the message." A typical P.O.D. lyric is pointed but tries to avoid religious cliche: "Commit my life to rebirth...