Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...emboldened secularists, a great many young conservatives have precisely the same goal. Indeed, supporters of the AKP, which has dominated the Turkish parliament for the past five years, have been invigorated by the secularists' opposition. After the Turkish army, a stalwart (if frequently undemocratic) defender of the country's secular heritage, intervened in April to block the party's choice for President, the AKP vowed to leave the decision to the people by calling for early elections. (If the party wins a majority in the parliament, it aims to change the constitution to allow a direct presidential vote.) Hundreds...
...years, young secularists like Utku Koseoglu took their power for granted. They saw themselves as the rightful heirs to Ataturk, the West-leaning founder of modern Turkey in 1923 who decreed a secular state and exhorted subsequent generations to defend it. Ataturk's "secular establishment," rooted in the military and judiciary, became a kind of ruling class. When political parties strayed too far from secularist principles, the army stepped in - for example, to force an Islamist-led government from power in 1997. Few young Turks felt compelled to vote, the more so after the military banned political parties from campuses...
...promoting greater understanding of Islam may be a tall order for a star whose private life and secular peccadilloes, often fodder for sensational stories in Indonesian newspapers, seem at odds with his message of spirituality and tolerance. He is estranged from his wife and has told newspaper reporters that women should be free to do as they please "as long as they don't refuse," and that the place of a wife "is one level below the man." He has also been photographed posing in Jacuzzis with young starlets. Although these were publicity shots staged with performers that Dhani...
Osama bin Laden has been urging Al-Qaeda followers to open up shop in Somalia for years, but there was always doubt about whether that call would resonate in a largely secular nation with a historic wariness of Arab interference. No longer. After January's attacks by Ethiopia--which were backed by U.S. air power and aimed to reduce the threat of terrorism--an increasingly international Islamist presence has flourished in the country, drawn by the chaos of postinvasion Somalia and the chance to strike back at the U.S. and its ally Ethiopia. In Mogadishu, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed...
Even more to the point, Harvard’s contemporary religious scene is both vibrant and complex. It is not the case that a vestigial religious minority, Protestant and Christian, continues to defend itself in the face of a rampant and pluralistic secularism. As a result of Harvard’s own changed admissions policies over the last thirty years, more religiously varied students than ever before now choose to practice their religions here; and many, the products of a secular generation of parents, actually discover religion here for the first time. They are either introduced to the traditions...