Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After Watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I asked several children in the audience if they felt that the movie portrayed a "secular, bureaucratized, all-too-human sorcery, in which psychology and technology have superseded the sacred." They all answered no. They said it was a lot of fun. Do you really think that 8-year-olds go to see Harry Potter with deep analysis in mind? They were more critical of the "yucky kiss" than of any religious undertones supposedly hidden in the script. Let children be children for as long as possible...
...promoting jihadist militants, to use either as a club against regional enemies like India or as an excuse for retaining power. And Musharraf is no exception. In 2002, he manipulated parliamentary elections to hand Islamists control of two Pakistani provinces that border Afghanistan. By undermining Pakistan's large, relatively secular parties, he has left mosques and madrasahs as the most potent vehicles for political expression. Musharraf talks a good game about liberalizing Pakistani society, but his choice of allies suggests he's not serious. And little has been done...
...cult. Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, a second-tier contender who is vying for the evangelical vote, has been challenging Romney's claim to be the G.O.P.'s family-values candidate. The Brownback attacks and the Romney rebuttals have been getting far more coverage in religious media than in the secular press...
Indeed, thorny organizational issues were evident. Despite the conference's claims of national unity, attendees were overwhelmingly Sunni and mostly secular. A few smaller groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq - representing, said several delegates, a hated "foreign presence" - were not included. (Delegates present insisted outside organizations and governments had not sponsored the event or individual delegates). Although Shi'a and even some Kurdish leadership were allegedly invited, even organizers admitted the response had been underwhelming. (In fact, a conference spokesman said one of the non-negotiable items on the agenda was the rejection of autonomous regions within Iraq, a popular...
...particularly religious," said Mehmet Yilmaz, a store owner in an up-market Istanbul district that backs the secular CHP. "But my business is doing well under this government. The Turkish lira is stable. That's what counts for me. Honestly, I don't think there's any chance we are going to turn into Iran." Sociologist Nilufer Gole says the AKP has become Turkey's new "centrist, democratic" political alternative...