Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reason to doubt that Hamas and Fatah will be able to keep up the good cheer. After years of struggle against Israel, the Palestinians are watching their leaders engage in a bitter fight with each other over power and control of the Palestinian Authority. It pits Abbas, a secular but weak moderate, who controls the presidency and has the backing of Israel and the international community, against Hamas, which won a majority in legislative elections last January, but has struggled to establish legitimacy, due in part to the cutoff in Western aid to its government. The violence reached new heights...
...equipment for them, it's for internal security and self-defense," the official says. "There's no 'for al-Qaeda use only' tag on it." Unlike the Taliban and al-Qaeda operating further north along the mountainous Afghan border region, however, the Baluch are not Islamist militants. "They are secular and anti-Taliban," says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, "yet American guns are being used against them." (Bugti says he's an agnostic, and some clan leaders espouse socialist values and enjoy whisky.) Baluch sources say that U.S. surveillance aircraft and Cobra gunships have targeted tribesmen. The State...
...traditional way of doing things. In traditional societies you do not accept this level of aggression. Islamic fundamentalism is spreading in Africa. Is that a problem that we can do anything about? It's a universal problem. The answer is partly education and partly the enforcement of laws of secular societies that do not privilege any one religion against another. We lost an opportunity in Nigeria when within a secular constitution encroachments were made, blatantly, openly, by [advocates of Islamic law]. Obasanjo fell down flat on this. He was very ill-advised. The World Cup is playing right now here...
...dusty town of Zarqa before finding his life's purpose in the terrorist camps of Afghanistan. After returning to Jordan he was arrested for possessing explosives and spent five years in prison, where he memorized the Koran and drafted cellmates to join his quest to overthrow Jordan's secular rulers. "Either you were with them or you were an enemy," a former prison mate told TIME in 2004. "There was no gray area." Al-Zarqawi drifted back to Afghanistan and passed through Iran and northern Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003. In the chaotic days after the fall...
...Despite U.S. concerns, there are real differences between Somalia and Afghanistan under the Taliban. While Somalis are Muslim, many are secular in outlook and would fight against the strict imposition of shari'a law. The coalition of groups who forced the warlords out of Mogadishu is also far from homogenous - and may fall apart now that the common enemy is banished. Privately some U.S. State Department officials focused on Somalia have questioned whether there is any link between Mogadishu's Islamic leaders and Al Qaeda...