Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...forced Bangladesh's leaders to acknowledge the country's internal terrorist threat. Indian intelligence and BSF officials say that Dhaka is not doing enough to stop Bangladeshi jihadist groups in the border areas from crossing into India. But the victory in Bangladesh's Dec. 29 general election of the secular Awami League, whose leader (and new Prime Minister) Sheikh Hasina has pledged to curb Islamic militancy, could mean new urgency on Dhaka's part...
...shore up his personal standing at the expense of rivals, just as Saddam did. Vice President Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a prominent Shi'ite, has openly criticized the centralization of power in the Prime Minister's office. "We don't want another dictator in Baghdad," says Maysoon al-Damluji, a secular Member of Parliament. "It worries us all that [Maliki] is beginning to behave like a tyrant...
...polls, Iraqis have shown little appetite for tough guys, preferring to vote for diffuse coalitions of parties with little in common beyond sectarian identity. The cautionary tale for Maliki is Iyad Allawi, the country's first post-Saddam Prime Minister: he, too, portrayed himself as a strongman, but his secular coalition won barely 14% of the vote. "Maliki will go the same way as Allawi," says Abdel-Bari al-Zebari, a Kurdish MP. "Iraqis know that a strongman is not in their best interests...
...Miller and his colleagues presented findings from two controlled trials in which patients underwent drug treatment. Some of the patients received spiritual guidance as part of the treatment - learning such practices as prayer, meditation and service to others, all of which are central to 12-step programs. Others received secular psychotherapy. Because of the enduring popularity of AA and similar programs that involve a spiritual component, Miller and his team expected the patients in the spiritual group to do better than those in the secular group. They were wrong - at least in the short term...
While both groups eventually benefited relatively equally from their treatment - abusing substances on fewer days - it took longer to see improvement among those in the spiritual group. What's more, those who received spiritual guidance reported being significantly more anxious and depressed after four months than those who got secular help. Those problems abated at about the eight-month point, but because substance abusers are at high risk for suicide, some worry that it may not be a good idea to put them through demanding spiritual calisthenics in the early months of their recovery. (Read a 2007 TIME cover story...