Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...candidate’s personal religious beliefs should not matter for the presidency. It is this same logic that other candidates with secular, individualist attitudes use to defend abortion, yet when it comes to Mike Huckabee’s candidacy, students seem to find relevance in every detail of his theological predisposition. In other words, what does evolution have to do with being a competent public official and head of state? This is especially true since he has no objection to evolution being taught in schools. It is thus disingenuous to oppose Huckabee on the grounds of his Evangelical Christian...
Benazir Bhutto's assassination is a body blow to the troubled but strategically vital state of Pakistan. It removes from the scene a secular, liberal, pro-Western leader. It gives momentum to Pakistan's jihadis in their campaign to Talibanize the country, and it edges Pakistan closer toward Islamic revolution. Her death is also, of course, a tragedy for her family, including the three children she leaves motherless. But the horror of Bhutto's end should not blind us to her mediocre legacy, and it is misleading to depict her as any sort of martyr for freedom and democracy...
...nothing to rein in the agency's disastrous policy of training Islamist jihadis to do the ISI's dirty work elsewhere. As a young correspondent covering the conflict in Kashmir in the late 1980s and early '90s, I saw how, during her premiership, Pakistan sidelined the Kashmiris' secular resistance movement and instead gave aid and training to the brutal Islamist groups created and controlled by the government. Had Bhutto taken a more robust stance toward the jihadis her intelligence services were patronizing, it is quite possible that 9/11 would never have happened--and she would still be alive...
...only force capable of taking on the country's landowners and their military cousins. That is why, in recent elections, the Islamists have hugely increased their share of the vote and why they now control much of the west of the country. Benazir Bhutto was a brave, gutsy, secular and liberal woman. But she was a central part of Pakistan's problems, not a solution to them...
...Wednesday, praying that organization will trump enthusiasm. David Woolcock, a financial and marketing analyst, told TIME at a Romney rally this week that he started as a Huckabee supporter because of his religious bent but came around to appreciating Romney's data-driven decision making style. "I'm a secular person, we should keep church church and government government. That sounds kind of liberal doesn't it? But I mean what matters the most is this world and this country...