Word: secularize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fatwa, or religious decree, ordering Sadat's murder, but was acquitted. The assassination of the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel settled nothing. The clash between Islamic religious and political authority is more widespread and in some places more threatening now than it was then. Today every secular Muslim government from North Africa to the Persian Gulf faces a challenge from radical fundamentalists. Their accusation is not just that political leaders have strayed from the holy law of the Koran but that they have done so without solving the chronic unemployment, corruption and hopelessness that plague the Arab...
This is the dark side of Islam, which shows its face in violence and terrorism intended to overthrow modernizing, more secular regimes and harm the Western nations that support them. Its influence far outweighs its numbers. The Islamic revival that has swept the Middle East is primarily a peaceful movement for a return to religious purity. But where desperation is greatest, a small number of radicals have resorted to military action to impose the Islamic ideology they espouse. For the most part, they are not members of some grand conspiracy sponsored by a state apparatus, but loosely organized, grass- roots...
...well be our most interesting idea. Down the ages, humans have posited a deity, or deities, in order to fulfill a pragmatic need: primarily, to find meaning and value in life. Man is the only animal that worships; religion underlies conflicts and economics even in the secular 20th century, the only age in history that has not regarded some form of faith as natural and normative...
...main flaws. One is a tendency toward "belligerent righteousness," which has led to pogroms, inquisitions and other shameful manifestations of intolerance that defile the image of God as a benevolent creator. The other -- most apparent in Western Christianity -- is a tendency to define God in terms compatible with secular thinking. Thus the Jesuit theologian Leonard Lessius (1554-1623) argued that the existence of God could be demonstrated scientifically, like any other fact. Similarly, the 19th century German exponents of the Science of Judaism argued that their religion was a wholly rational faith. Alas, the end result of treating the deity...
Reed's goal is to give the movement a gentler, more catholic visage. He wants to make peace with mainstream Republicans while continuing the movement's war with secular liberals. The religious right must broaden its agenda, he believes, because "we have allowed ourselves to be ghettoized by a narrow band of issues like abortion, homosexual rights and prayer in school." Even the majority of Evangelicals, he argues, are more interested in taxes, crime and the quality of education. Becoming more ecumenical will entail making alliances of convenience with conventional conservatives who, for example, do not favor outlawing abortion. This...