Word: secularized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Every year, thousands of Tibetans make pilgrimages to Dharamsala, India, to hear the Dalai Lama's Kalachara teachings. Last year, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader struck an unusually secular note, warning against the exploitation of endangered species. Tibetans are among Asia's largest consumers of tiger pelts and leopard skins. They use the fur to trim their robes, in rituals and as rugs; tiger claws and dried leopard organs are also used in traditional medicine, and Tibetans dominate the illicit trade in animal parts between India and China. The Dalai Lama's word traveled fast. Buddhists in Lhasa, the Tibetan...
Many Western liberals and secular types look at the zealotry closing in on them and draw an obvious conclusion: religion is the problem. As our global politics become more enamored of religious certainty, the stakes have increased, they argue, and they have a point. The evil terrorists of al-Qaeda invoke God as the sanction for their mass murder. And many beleaguered Americans respond by invoking God's certainty. And the cycle intensifies into something close to a religious war. When the Presidents of the U.S. and Iran speak as much about God as about diplomacy, we have entered...
There is, however, a way out. And it will come from the only place it can come from--the minds and souls of people of faith. It will come from the much derided moderate Muslims, tolerant Jews and humble Christians. The alternative to the secular-fundamentalist death spiral is something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt. Fundamentalism is not the only valid form of faith, and to say it is, is the great lie of our time...
...time, perhaps, the perceived contradictions between Europe's secular and religious traditions will wither away. Liberal values do not exclude religious practice; they can help it flourish. The reason Turkey's pro-Islamic government is so eager to join Europe, for example - and the reason it has been so disappointed by the opposition it has encountered on religious or cultural grounds - is that Europe's liberal traditions promise Turkey's conservative Muslims a degree of protection they do not have now. Europe has never - not even in the 1960s and '70s - been an entirely secular society. The need...
...without repercussion. The motive of the U.S. authorities? Ramadan says it's to keep him from voicing his criticisms of U.S. policy in the Arab world to American audiences, adding that the original U.S. decision to rescind his visa was probably influenced by critics in Europe. In France, a secular state with a large Muslim population, detractors accuse him of concealing radical messages in moderate-sounding pronouncements. So, still no U.S. visa. "Is this Administration now going to say, 'We got bad information, he can come now'?" asks Ramadan. Whatever the reason for the rejection, one French counter-terrorism official...