Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...wife had falsely promised that she was a virgin - a confession he obtained after furiously waving the new couple's spotless bedclothes before still-celebrating wedding guests. Though the decision made no mention of religion, the fact that the couple were Muslim sparked complaints that France's strictly secular state is being undermined by traditional Arab cultural strictures. The court ruling also infuriated feminists, who saw its acceptance of prior sexual experience as grounds for annulment as tantamount to treating marriage as the equivalent of a commercial transaction in which the buyer had discovered a hidden flaw in his purchase...
...Initial reaction in France has been muted ahead of the Monday's Bastille Day holiday, though activist group Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive) that champions secular and feminist causes said it was "relieved" by the ruling. "The Republic can in no manner validate this kind of tool of oppression and submission of women," a communique by the group said-referring to what it has called the "green fascism" of misogyny practiced in many of France's blighted suburban housing projects under the cover of Islamic fundamentalism or Arab cultural machismo...
...banning ostensible religious symbols from public schools - a measure primarily aimed at keeping Islamic headscarves out of classrooms. And each new report of commotion - or even violence - in hospitals when Muslim husbands refuse to allow male doctors to tend to their wives sparks renewed outcry and debate that secular French society is under siege from foreign religious influences. The Conseil d'Etat's ruling may allay some of those fears-but not without generating cries of discrimination among many of France's five million Muslim...
...everything. What you will see is over here we have our battered women's support group, over here we have our after-school activities. We have our group for the unemployed professionals and so on. They have really filled in where maybe there would have been public services or secular services at some other time. In the same way that Hamas, and I understand Hizballah also, gain a base by providing social services that people aren't getting otherwise...
...also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue "was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics." He is a master tactician...