Word: secularized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spectacle in India is riveting: virulent anti-Muslim diatribes spouted by a pedigreed and ambitious young Hindu politician who shares the surname of the world's foremost apostle of non-violence and who is descended from the Prime Minister who founded modern India as a secular state to serve the country's multiplicity of faiths. Since early March, Varun Gandhi, 29, has been the scandal of India's political class after he called for, among many things, the hands of Muslims to be cut off if they are raised against Hindus, their throats to be slashed, their population...
...multiracial nation to genocide may sound like hyperbole elsewhere, but the French know that tinkering with the founding principles and universal values of the nation was central to some of the ugliest episodes in the country's history. The French constitution proudly declares the country "an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic [that] assures equality before the law for all its citizens, without distinction of origin, of race, or religion". That gender- and color-blindness, national ideology holds, protects minority populations by ignoring the differences that divide them into often mutually hostile groups in societies like...
...recent months, long-standing hostility between the two communities has escalated, whipped up by resurgent Arab secular nationalism. At the federal level, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly said he wants to strengthen Baghdad's hand at the expense of Iraq's 18 provinces, including Kurdistan - the semiautonomous three-province Kurdish region in the north - much to the chagrin of the federalist-minded Kurds. At the provincial level, newly empowered hard-line Sunni groups like al-Hadba in Mosul, Nineveh's capital, are preparing to expand their political clout. (See a TIME photographer's diary of the Iraq conflict...
...some of India's more fierce internal conflicts: "Forecasts have predicted that India's twin forces of a free market and a secular state will ensure uninterrupted growth and a steady move toward liberal economic ideas. But I have noticed that people outside the country often sound far surer about where we are headed than Indians themselves. In this, India is a bit like a Monet painting - from a distance, the picture seems clear. It presents an image of an increasingly liberal, outward looking country which is eager for the opportunities that are now within its grasp. But close...
...well as a parallel intra-Sunni battle. Elections are now playing a role in this political drama. January's provincial polls, for example, dealt a devastating blow to religious and federalist-minded parties like the Shi'ite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. They were firmly repudiated in favor of secular, nationalist groups. But will this resurgent nationalism carry through to the more important parliamentary elections slated for December? And if so, what will a reordered Iraqi political scene mean for future U.S. ties to Iraq? Will sharpened intrasectarian battles be fought at the ballot box or on the streets...