Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Like Indonesia, Malaysia is struggling to determine how Muslim to be. Unlike Indonesia, which is governed by a secular constitution, Malaysia already counts Islam as its official faith-although the constitution also guarantees freedom of religion. Each state has a fatwa committee that makes religious decrees applicable to Malaysian Muslims, most of whom are Sunni. In Kelantan state, Muslim women must wear headscarves in public, while several states have made forsaking Islam a crime that can result in prison time. "We should not limit Islam to a few rituals," says Sulaiman Abdullah, former president of the Malaysian Bar Council. "Malaysia...
...that offers religious mentoring and encourages students to adhere to Shari'a, or Islamic law. Female faculty in the Department of Medicine, irrespective of their religion, are barred from wearing short skirts, while those in Humanities must eschew tight pants and low necklines. "This university is supposed to be secular, but it has become an Islamic zone," says Gadis Arivia, a UI lecturer in philosophy. "It's no different from the rest of the country...
...Hindu, Buddhist and animist traditions that had flourished before Islam arrived in the archipelago in the 12th century. Some 88% of Indonesia's 245 million citizens are Muslim, and the vast majority of those would label themselves as moderate. Indeed, the country was founded in 1945 as a secular state protecting the rights of the nation's non-Muslims, now 30 million strong. But as Indonesia's wealth gap widens-roughly 40 million citizens now live below the poverty line-conservative mosques have attracted worshippers, in part, by promising to alleviate economic hardship and eradicate immorality. "They preach that Islam...
...Unlike Iran or Saudi Arabia, however, the Republic of Indonesia is governed by a constitution that guarantees a separation of mosque and state. Those secular underpinnings, say some legal experts, call into question the very constitutionality of the Shari'a bylaws. But the administration of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has sidestepped this debate. Vice President Jusuf Kalla calls the faith-based regulations "normal" in a Muslim-majority state, insisting: "It is not Shari'a law but laws influenced by Shari'a." Yudhoyono himself has avoided any public comment on the bylaws' legality. "The President will do nothing on this...
...well-intentioned Catholic students. But I was wrong. The kids handing out fliers had been members of True Love Revolution (TLR)—Harvard’s newest pro-abstinence group, which provides a non-religious rationale for waiting until marriage. I was eager to see if a secular argument could be as compelling as threats of eternal hell-fire, which, even if they’ve not convinced me to keep my belt tied, have always made me feel, at the very least, temporarily slutty...