Word: secularized
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Intelligence failures are more understandable today than they were in 1979. At that time, Washington stubbornly stood behind the regime of secular and autocratic Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, despite the rebirth of religious fundamentalism among millions of Iranians and their yearning for an obscure Muslim cleric living in exile: Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence officers blanketed Tehran but ignored the gathering storm. It was a massive blunder. Khomeini swept into power and transformed Middle East politics and alliances. His supporters seized the American compound and its occupants, an act that has frozen bilateral relations in a state...
...Iranian reform movement are quite visible, quite vocal and quite well endowed, technologically. But they're not a majority. We keep missing that." Rutgers University professor Hooshang Amirahmadi fears that policymakers will focus more on the election than on the larger struggle of a new class of secular nationalists to break the bonds of theocratic rule. "The movement is moving beyond the framework that the Islamic Republic has set for itself," Amirahmadi says. "It's no longer a struggle between factions in the system...
...four women chatting at an outdoor restaurant in an old cobblestone courtyard would draw little notice in Tehran, perhaps, or Beirut or Amman. But with their heads wrapped in tight scarves, concealing every strand of hair, they stand out against the secular traditions of modern Sarajevo. Friends since childhood, the four women, all 23, laugh when asked how their mothers reacted after they became intensely religious and began wearing head scarves. "It was very strange for them," says Saudina Husic, a student of Arabic and Persian, her legs covered by a pea-green robe that matches her veil. "But they...
...locals about Sarajevo's Islamic resurgence and most rush to point out that the city is still mainly secular. People continue to pack its many bars, and plenty of women wear revealing outfits. At the King Fahd mosque, Nezim Halilovic, a former war commander who delivers the Friday sermons to thousands of worshippers, says that the city is simply experiencing the kind of religious feeling that was impossible under the communist rule of the former Yugoslavia's leader, Josip Broz Tito. Like others in Sarajevo, Halilovic also accuses Serb politicians of falsely portraying Sarajevo as a hub of militant Islam...
...Kremlin is absolutely powerless," says Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at Moscow's Carnegie Institute. "They brought this situation on themselves by letting the local élite rule." After the fall of communism, Moscow, knowing that a secular or Orthodox Christian government would have little influence over the region's Muslim population, struck an informal deal with the republics: Moscow would appoint a governor who would be loyal to the Kremlin and, in return, that governor would remain in power provided no large-scale conflicts erupted...