Word: secularize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this autobiographical screed, Dershowitz begins with a childhood in an Orthodox Jewish section of Brooklyn. The boy was too secular for Talmudic scholarship, but he proved to be a stubborn and flashy debater. A fellow student appraised him: Alan "has a mouth of Webster and a head of Clay." The mouth went on to Yale Law School, where he ranked first in his class, yet found himself locked out of prominent legal firms because of "the world of bigotry, discrimination, racism, and anti-Semitism called the American...
...Saudi Arabia seems to have returned to its placid ways. But the calm atmosphere is a mirage. Operation Desert Storm may be over, but it has unleashed powerful political and social crosswinds in the kingdom. Buffeted by the currents, King Fahd is struggling to preserve a precarious balance between secular moderates and religious conservatives while opening up the family-run government to his subjects. At stake is not only the direction of Saudi society, but also the survival of a royal dynasty that has ruled the country since its founding 60 years...
...partly the extraordinary range of internal conflicts within the region, partly the tug of Islamic fundamentalism. But even in a country like Iran, you see a remarkable range of disagreement that has internalized pluralism. There are patterns emerging that create a kind of rough balance between more or less secular forces, even within the Islamic framework of the country. You are finding a similar evolution in Jordan...
...drama out of the discussion and dims it down to a paler shade of Unitarianism. Evil, in whatever intellectual framework, is by definition a monster. It has a strange coercive force: a temptation, a mystery, a horrible charm. Shakespeare understood that perfectly when he created Iago in his secular and motiveless malignity...
...world is swinging on a hinge between two ages. The prospect awakens, in the Western, secular mind, the idea that all future outcomes, good or evil, are a human responsibility. John Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address, "Here on earth, God's work must surely be our own." When there will no longer be any place to hide, it becomes important to identify the real evils and not go chasing after false evils. It is possible that people will even grow up on the subject...