Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Those views are not precisely the Christian ones of the party's name - Alkassar, now a district councillor for the cdu in the small university town of Homburg, is a Muslim. But for Alkassar and many like him, identifying with a conservative Christian party is preferable to the secular alternative. "I believe in the importance of God and faith," he says. Such insistence that religion - any religion - should have a role in politics is echoing throughout Europe. After decades of rising secularism and declining church attendance, religion is now back on Europe's political agenda. Islamic terrorism and Turkey...
...John Reid described the letter as a "dreadful misjudgment." But it is not only because of Europe's Muslims that the old patterns are changing. Recent controversies have inspired a broader and deeper re-examination of what it means to be European, reviving the ancient struggle between Christian and secular values. The Spanish parliament's recent decision to legalize gay marriage, for example, was met by severe disapproval from the Vatican, as were the 2004 objections to Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione's candidacy for European Justice Commissioner on the grounds that he had labeled homosexuality a "sin." In a secular...
...time, perhaps, the perceived contradictions between Europe's secular and religious traditions will wither away. Liberal values do not exclude religious practice; they can help it flourish. The reason Turkey's pro-Islamic government is so eager to join Europe, for example - and the reason it has been so disappointed by the opposition it has encountered on religious or cultural grounds - is that Europe's liberal traditions promise Turkey's conservative Muslims a degree of protection they do not have now. Europe has never - not even in the 1960s and '70s - been an entirely secular society. The need...
...without repercussion. The motive of the U.S. authorities? Ramadan says it's to keep him from voicing his criticisms of U.S. policy in the Arab world to American audiences, adding that the original U.S. decision to rescind his visa was probably influenced by critics in Europe. In France, a secular state with a large Muslim population, detractors accuse him of concealing radical messages in moderate-sounding pronouncements. So, still no U.S. visa. "Is this Administration now going to say, 'We got bad information, he can come now'?" asks Ramadan. Whatever the reason for the rejection, one French counter-terrorism official...
...Bush will welcome Nazarbayev at the White House, and then the Kazakhstani President will go to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. Kazakhstan's growing oil shipments to world markets, and its potential to emerge as a stable, modernized, predominantly Muslim but religiously tolerant state with a secular government in the volatile region, have obvious appeal for the Bush Administration - so much so that it tends to downplay the country's gagged media; the arbitrary arrests, exiles and murders of opposition leaders; its rubber-stamp political institutions and bogus elections; and rampant corruption, including a $78 million kickbacks...