Secular Stagnation Heads South

Secular Stagnation for Free

The Problem With Secular Stagnation

But the moral power of religious faith does not need a supernatural explanation. Its strength is belief itself belief in a moral order that defies secular, or, indeed, religious dictators.

In other countries for example India and Sri Lanka the constitutions may have remained secular in nature but in practice colonial elites took over State apparatuses and entrenched their own power.

The Madonna like status of Cory Aquino in the Philippines was inspiring in the heady days of People Power, but did little to bolster the institutions of a secular democracy. In Poland, once the battle against Communism was won, the Solidarity movement was soon sundered by conflicts between secular democrats and believers who looked to the Church for guidance.

But, of course, our secular religion is technology.

True, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon can make speeches, convene meetings, and propose actions, but his role is more secretary than general. Sometimes likened to a secular Pope, the UN Secretary General can wield the soft power of persuasion but little hard economic or military power.

Think of it as a kind of secular church.

Why has religion returned to secular and democratic politics?

They ensure that India remains secular, democratic and pluralistic.

Palestinian politics is approaching the point of no return. The power struggle between the Islamist Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his secular nationalist Fatah movement is intensifying, with tensions breaking into outright combat.

There are secular kooks there are smart kooks, dumb kooks.

But the secular minded people can be influenced by that.

Popular movements have brought a range of avowedly Islamist political parties to power, replacing the largely secular former regimes. What that will mean for these countries, and for the region, is one of today s central geopolitical questions.

The women s movement in Morocco which now bridges secular and religious communities is setting an example of the power of social thought in a traditional society. Re visiting traditional interpretations of Scripture is not the end of the story.

Gul s wife s headscarf was interpreted as the symbol of darker changes to come. If the First Lady wears a headscarf, maintained the secular minded elite, the whole secular system could be undermined.

Why is there such disparity between the secular realm and the sacred?

As a result, after only a year in power, the military backed by the same secular, liberal young people who had opposed it in 2011 drove President Mohamed Morsi out of power. Unable to mount a political alternative, however, the protesters rejection of the Islamist government served only to put the army back in charge.

This election is taking place because when the AKP party, the conservative party now in power, designated Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as its candidate for president, the country s secular elite cringed. Gul was not the issue the issue was his wife.

The secular opposition s accession to power on the back of a tank might feed the Islamists rage for years to come. The Muslim Brotherhood s loss of trust in the democratic process would be bad news for Egypt and a boost to Al Qaeda and other jihadists who believe that power can be obtained only through blood and terror.

But compassion is also equally at home in the secular as in the religious.

On the one hand was my mother, a well educated, secular, modern, westernized, Turkish woman.

While most Egyptians may support Morsi s aims, a dramatic expansion of presidential power in order to attain them was, for many, a step too far. 160 Given Egypt s extreme polarization and distrust between its Islamist and secular forces, Morsi should have anticipated the protests.

The military rose to power in Egypt, Pakistan, and other Arab countries in the early and mid twentieth century. In Turkey, the military proclaimed itself the guardian of the secular Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, himself a military man.

How to bridge the gap in developing countries between secular, more or less Westernized urban elites and the rural poor is an old question. One solution is to enforce secular modernization by oppressing the poor and their religious organizations.

The armed forces, however, claim a constitutional mandate to protect the Republic s secular traditions. And Turkey s generals have intervened in politics several times to defend Kemalism Atatürk s secular ideology of modernization that pushed Islamic Turkey towards European style liberalism.

The Algerian secularists strategy of exclusion, fraud, cheating, and gerrymandering backfired badly Islamists were perceived as victims, while secularists with some exceptions were cast as unprincipled opportunists. Enforcing a secular constitution before elections does not guarantee a secular outcome.

The second largest group, of nearly 30 million, is the one described as non religious or secular.

This secular non religious vote, if properly mobilized, is nine times as numerous as the Jewish vote.

Other states parties have concluded that the purposes of secular education require some restrictions on forms of dress.

Some argue that the absence of a secular liberal option in Arab politics stems from fear of political Islam. For decades, Western powers backed military regimes in the Arab world, willingly ignoring their systematic repression of democratic movements and rights, in order to ensure that Islamists did not gain power.

The recent assassination of the secular Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid has raised the stakes for women there. Belaid was a voice on behalf of women s rights, and the threat of increased political violence will focus on those who advocate secular equality for all Tunisians, including women.

The rights of second and third wives are not covered by secular law. This category of women is aware that secular law cannot protect their rights. The absence of rights forces these women to endure all kinds of violence committed by the husband and his relatives.

Well, one thing to notice is that we do something different when talking about morality especially secular, academic, scientist types.

What's missing is that we are Homo duplex, but modern, secular society was built to satisfy our lower, profane selves.

Many believe that Congress with its commitment to secular values, economic growth, and helping the poor now has a mandate to transform India into a great power. Business and financial interests, in particular, are delighted with the outcome, crowing about the bonanza about to be unleashed as Congress liberalizes India s economy further.

Yes, Syria s secular opposition is weak and divided, while the jihadis are more dynamic but jihadi supremacy in the event of an opposition victory is not inevitable. The US and its allies should conduct a robust policy, make a more significant investment in the secular opposition, and articulate clear goals.

It has been observed that in the formative phases of the new States almost all the constitutions were secular in nature.

TUNIS On December 21, Tunisia completed a remarkable democratic transfer of power, with the election of Beji Caid Essebsi, the leader of the secular political party Nidaa Tounes (Call of Tunisia). As with the parliamentary election in October, the process of choosing a president was, for the most part, fair and free of violence.

In February, Egypt s Coptic patriarch, Pope Tawadros II, sharply criticized the country s leadership in a televised interview, calling the new constitution discriminatory and dismissing Morsi s national dialogues as an empty gesture. This unusually assertive stance reflects rising frustration among Christians, as well as the secular and liberal opposition, with the Muslim Brotherhood s power monopoly.

Local power, central power, now, people power.

I'm going to talk about compassion and the golden rule from a secular perspective and even from a kind of scientific perspective.

When Turkey became a democracy in 1950, the previous system s secular Kemalist elites attempted to harness the power of the military and the bureaucracy to control the elected government. In fact, the Turkish military, with the judiciary s support, explicitly intervened in the civilian government s functioning in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997, each time in the name of protecting secularism.

Secular, military, and Mubarak era foes of the Muslim Brotherhood have used every lever at their disposal, democratic or not, to block the Islamist parties democratic exercise of power. This is consistent with a decades old pattern in Egyptian history, in which the Brothers and Islamist political forces in general were outlawed, and their members imprisoned, tortured, and exiled.