Word: secularism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...everyone who watched the rally supported CDAR's pro-choice agenda. "They're here to impose secular humanism on what is supposed to be a God-fearing nation. The pro-abortion side is anti-God and anti-life," said Mary E. Haggerty, a Cambridge resident...
...named to fill the largely ceremonial office of President. The shura thus managed to bridge, for the moment, the principal issue dividing the rebel side: whether post-Soviet Afghanistan should be governed as an Islamic revolutionary state, on the Iranian model, or as one that is moderate and secular. Shah strongly advocates the fundamentalist approach, and Muhammadi heads one of the moderate factions...
...Sayed Ahmad Gailani, 56, is the most pro-Western and secular of the mujahedin leaders, despite his claim of direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad. Gailani's National Islamic Front is nicknamed the "Gucci Muj" for its leader's taste in well-tailored camouflage uniforms. Though he favors the return of exiled King Zahir Shah, Gailani is also a fervent believer in Western-style elections...
...Britain, Rushdie had no shortage of defenders. A group of writers led by playwright Harold Pinter presented a petition in Rushdie's behalf at No. 10 Downing Street. Author Anthony Burgess, writing in the newspaper the Independent, stated the Western position precisely: "What a secular society thinks of the Prophet Muhammad is its own affair, and reason, apart from law, does not permit aggressive interference of the kind that has brought shame and death to Islamabad," where the rioting took several lives. "If Muslims want to attack the Christian or humanistic vision of Islam contained in our literature," Burgess observed...
Last year's furor over the Martin Scorsese motion picture The Last Temptation of Christ demonstrated that Christians, particularly those who believe in the literal interpretation of Scripture, are similarly sensitive about fictional portrayal of the sacred, though their protest generally takes less violent forms. Even secular gods are sometimes held by their followers to be above scrutiny; in earlier times the Kremlin was notoriously thin-skinned about revelations concerning the private lives of Lenin and other members of the Communist pantheon...