Word: secularizing
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...case of Senegal, Penal Article 319.3 provides that “whoever commits an improper or unnatural act with a person of the same sex will be punished by imprisonment of between one and five years.”This law, however, has not been invoked much in secular Senegal until now. Generally, as Imam Amadou Kanté acknowledges, homosexuality is treated much like public drunkenness. It is okay, he says, to be drunk in private, but not in public. But he is clear to note that in private or public, Islam does not sanction homosexuality. So why were nine...
...Rubeiy isn't a top contender. He is campaigning as a member of the secular Iraqi National Accord Party, headed by former Prime Minister Ayad al-Allawi. It is a party that falls below the popularity of ruling Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Islamic Party. Rubeiy believes that his party ranks fourth or fifth in the eyes of his fellow Iraqis in the capital...
Still, candidates for the Iraqi National Accord, Iraq's second largest secular party after the Kurdish bloc, say they see a window of opportunity. As Iraq moves toward its first round of nationwide elections in nearly four years, a complex political map of new parties and fluid, cross-sectarian alliances suggest that the country may be slowly moving beyond the Shi'ite-Sunni divide that characterized the post-Saddam Hussein politics of previous years...
...last election, there were alliances. Most of those alliances have fractured, and each one now has its own list," says Iman al-Barazenchi, an Iraqi National Accord candidate for the Baghdad provincial council. Secular candidates say disillusionment with the legacy of those blocs is also creating a shift toward a more nonsectarian type of politics. "The Islamic party and the Islamic movements are retreating from the Iraqi streets. The Iraqi streets are becoming non-Sunni and non-Shi'ite," says another secular candidate, Nebras al-Ma'mouri. "Voters are looking for people outside of these things...
...Rubeiy thinks they still have time to attract some of the disillusioned. Of course it would help, he says, if al-Allawi's party and others like it weren't suffering from the same problem as everyone else on Iraq's political stage: lack of unity. "I need one secular party. We need a liberal front," he says. "If we were all together, we would have a great chance - we would take No. 1 in Iraq...