Word: secularizing
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Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was ruled by a mostly secular Sunni Arab elite, which viciously suppressed the Shiite Arab majority and the Kurdish minority. But the toppling of Saddam's regime has altered the power balance between those groups, who are waging an increasingly bitter power struggle...
...political process of forming a broad-based new government. Since the main Shi?ite coalition in Parliament renominated the widely disliked Ibrahim al-Jaafari for the position of prime minister, the U.S. has been edging away from its Shi?ite allies in the government and lining up with secular parties, Sunnis and Kurds, all in an effort to bring more Sunnis into the cabinet. This is the key part of their plan to undermine the Sunni insurgency and begin the withdrawal of American troops...
...legislative elections last month, he won a seat in the 132-member Palestinian parliament, part of a landslide victory for the militant Islamic group. Now religious conservatives like al-Bitawi find themselves in a position to promote social strictures that were only fitfully observed under the rule of the secular Fatah party. As he offers visitors a bowl of fruit, al-Bitawi recalls how, after returning to the West Bank from religious studies in Jordan in the 1970s, he looked for a future wife who covered herself in the traditional hijab, or head scarf, and the body- length jilbab...
...reality is that the cartoons simply aggravated an ongoing international problem: dealing with radical Islam in secular Western societies. Reactions around the world have shown how widespread this crisis is: Jakarta’s Danish Embassy was attacked by Muslim mobs, several Muslim religious leaders in the Middle East called for a “day of anger” and demonstrators in London burned flags and embassies were torched in Damascus...
...movement, bound together by a dogmatic faith, faces the seeming horror of a pluralistic democracy in which everyone has the right to blaspheme, offend, and shock others. To repress speech in the interest of curtailing blasphemy would be to subscribe to a particular religious dogma, which a liberal, secular government ought never do. Before democracy can be established in the Middle East, the violent protesters and conservative governments must demonstrate respect for freedom of speech. Ramya Parthasarathy ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Stoughton Hall...