Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sadr who controls 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament-and who is the linchpin of al-Maliki's governing coalition. I say this to Prime Minister al-Maliki: The U.S. cannot support a government that includes Muqtada al-Sadr. You must build a new coalition, one that includes the secular political parties and Sunnis and guarantees the Sunni minority the rights and the share of Iraqi oil revenues it deserves. We have not sacrificed 2,600 Americans to create a radical Shi'ite government in Iraq...
...asked whether secular Americans might not fear (rightly or wrongly) that the 42% favored theocracy. Mohler gently pulled me back from the majority paradigm to the minority paradigm: the caricature would have to be sedition, he explained, or at least "concern about persons in their midst who have a higher allegiance than is understood by the secular Americans to be the basis of the cultural contract...
...sandwich, word had spread around the neighborhood. Everyone blamed the dearth of fresh bread on the government's over-generous aid to the Shi`ites of Lebanon, displaced in the recent fighting between Israel and Hizballah. I should point out that my neighborhood is split between religious and secular families, and that the most pious of the bread-deprived were just as quick to shake their heads with resentment. No one said "let them eat cake," but it came pretty close...
...reasons converts give for making the change vary widely. But one common refrain is that in an increasingly secular world in which society's rules get looser by the day, Islam provides a detailed moral map covering everything from friendships to protecting the environment. And for Western youths, taking up Islam can also serve as an outlet for rebellion. A majority of converts, especially in Western Europe, are in their late teens or 20s. "Islam is a kind of refuge for those who are downtrodden and disenfranchised because it has become the religion of the oppressed," says Farhad Khosrokhavar...
...When public institutions like schools do anything, one of the basic rules is this: It must be for a secular reason, it must have primarily a secular effect and it can't entangle them with religion. That's why the U.S. Supreme Court struck down prayer and Bible reading in class. But Olivia's case raises unusual issues on the entanglement point. Her song was religious, but the talent show was open to the public and held after school, no students were required to attend, and no rule prohibited acts with religious themes. Yet school officials worried that someone, especially...