Word: secularizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...stifle the discontent, Saddam has become more brutal. In June his secular regime applied Islamic punishments to lawbreakers: amputating a thief's right hand for a first offense, a foot for a second offense. In August it was decreed that an army deserter or anyone sheltering him would lose...
...never mind. If reading the works of 26 authors proves too arduous a prospect, Bloom offers a final shortcut for the canonically hungry: "Shakespeare is the secular canon, or even the secular scripture; forerunners and legatees alike are defined by him alone for canonical purposes...
Such guidance was once the province of religion, and it is ultimately the religious experience that Bloom seeks in secular writing: "Since I myself am partial to finding the voice of God in Shakespeare or Emerson or Freud, depending on my needs, I have no difficulty in finding Dante's Comedy to be divine." He amplifies this perception a bit later: "As a writer, Shakespeare was a sort of god." Bloom is entitled to his worship, since he has spent a lifetime of reading achieving it. But he is not, in The Western Canon, a very effective prophet...
...current crisis in Algieria began in early 1992 when the secular political-military regime, anticipating a victory by the Islamic Salvation Front in the country's first freely-held elections, canceled the vote. The Front is an umbrella organization of Islamists, or Islamic fundamentalists, who believe that normative religious law should have a greater say in determining the political culture of Algeria...
...canceling the results of the election, the secular government also proved a fair-weather friend of the democratic process. When it looked like its secure hold on Algerian politics was about to give way, principle gave way first...