Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...AFGHANISTAN 18% Drop in infant mortality in Afghanistan in the five years since the Taliban's fall in 2001, due to wider immunization and improved natal care 85 Number of students and teachers killed last year in attacks on Afghan schools, blamed on Islamic militants who oppose secular schooling for boys and education of any kind for girls...
...over yet. Tuesday's ruling by the country's Constitutional Court that annulled the first round of voting for a new President in the Turkish Parliament effectively forced the democratically elected government into early elections. That raised hopes of an imminent resolution to the crisis, which was sparked by secular opposition to the nomination for the presidency of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a politician with an Islamist background. The Turkish lira, for example, rebounded on the news after two days of sharp losses. But that vote will not necessarily resolve the standoff between Turkey's Justice and Development Party...
...over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's insistence on nominating his number two, Abdullah Gul, as Turkey's next President. The presidency is a largely symbolic role, but he wields important veto power. With Gul as President, and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) a comfortable majority in parliament, secular Turks fear "it would be the beginning of the end for Turkey as we know it," says commentator Metin Munir. Their concern is that the AKP harbors a secret Islamist agenda, and that without the appropriate checks on their power, they will seek to adopt Sharia-based laws...
...presidency is the apex of Turkey's secular state system, and draws its symbolic strength from the country's founding President, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who inscribed a pro-Western orientation into the political DNA of the state he built on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Secularism - the strict division between religion and public life - is a lasting Ataturk legacy, as is a ban on wearing headscarves in public buildings...
...humanism is only one of the many ethical ways of life that atheists may follow. It is up to each individual to explain, and if need be, defend his or her own secular philosophy. Only when more atheists stand and speak up for their beliefs will people begin to shed their erroneous assumptions about atheism and decry bigotry against atheists. One can only hope that the “Pissed Catholic Mother” is of a dying breed...