Word: secularize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What lies at the heart of the sectarian violence in Iraq is not so much religious dispute as it is a very secular competition for power and prominence in the new Iraq. Iraq is not all that different from Northern Ireland or Bosnia, where religion paraded as ethnicity and became a vehicle for communal rivalries. In the vacuum of power left by the fall of Saddam Hussein, the game of numbers has favored Shi'as, who are 60% of the population. It is for this reason that they wholeheartedly embraced democracy. Disgruntled Sunnis, on the other hand, vested their fortunes...
...national politics and one of their key leaders, Jalal Talabani, is currently Iraq's president, the vast majority of Iraqi Kurds have signaled their desire for formal independence from Iraq. The Kurds are predominantly Sunni Muslim, although there is a Shiite minority, but Kurdish identity politics are dominated by secular nationalism, although an Islamist party made a surprisingly strong showing in January's election...
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was ruled by a mostly secular Sunni Arab elite, which viciously suppressed the Shiite Arab majority and the Kurdish minority. But the toppling of Saddam's regime has altered the power balance between those groups, who are waging an increasingly bitter power struggle...
...political process of forming a broad-based new government. Since the main Shi?ite coalition in Parliament renominated the widely disliked Ibrahim al-Jaafari for the position of prime minister, the U.S. has been edging away from its Shi?ite allies in the government and lining up with secular parties, Sunnis and Kurds, all in an effort to bring more Sunnis into the cabinet. This is the key part of their plan to undermine the Sunni insurgency and begin the withdrawal of American troops...
...legislative elections last month, he won a seat in the 132-member Palestinian parliament, part of a landslide victory for the militant Islamic group. Now religious conservatives like al-Bitawi find themselves in a position to promote social strictures that were only fitfully observed under the rule of the secular Fatah party. As he offers visitors a bowl of fruit, al-Bitawi recalls how, after returning to the West Bank from religious studies in Jordan in the 1970s, he looked for a future wife who covered herself in the traditional hijab, or head scarf, and the body- length jilbab...