Page 80 - Secular News Today

Once you weaken the state and empower everybody, everybody doesnt agree with each other, the left and the right, the religious and the secular, thats a recipe for much more conflict and competition for power within. the old bureaucracies dont go away. theyre all going to vie for power. you open it up for international intervention. the weak state allows for international intervention. in the short term its messy. the optimism isnt for the short term, thats whats with us to stay at some point is ...

Persuade a world which in large parts is becoming more secular, to think about god, let alone believe in god again, i think you have to have a plausible and attractive account of who god is, why people should be interested in the question at all. i think hes made that very clear. indeed, hes gone out of his way to talk about dialogue with flon believers, not just other kinds of christians. i think at his core spiritual mission, hes done that. the other thing hes done is signaled a really radical...

Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. he campaigned with the state department, with congress, he fed them faulty intelligence. in iraq, that is not a consideration. they consider him, many people do, a secular, moderate shia leader. i spoke with the spokesman for whose alliance holds 30 seats. they think they can work with ahmad chalabi. the problem is, as you remember, he was in charge of the debathification process. theres still a lot of resentment. >> so the u.s. has bad memories. iraqis do...

Through a broader prism. if you had looked at the middle east 15 years ago, you would have seen a string of strikingly similar regimes across the region from libya and the west to syria and iraq in the east. they were all repressive dictatorships, they were all secular in the sense they did not derive -- historically, theyd been supported by outside powers. first the british and french, then the super powers, which meant these rulers worried more about pleasing patrons abroad rather than carryin...

Through a broader presence. if you would look to the middle east 15 years ago you would have seen a stream of strikingly similar regimes across the reasonable gone from libya and tunisia in the west to syria and iraq in the east. they were all repressive dictatorships. they were all secular in the sense they did not derive their legitimacy from the outside powers. it meant that the rulers were more about pleasing patrons abroad rather than incurring favor at home and they had secure uncontested ...

>> you know whats interesting is when we go into a country and we leave, there is a vacuum created and it seems like al qaeda is coming. in we are going to leave afghanistan and there is no question the taliban is coming back. so, if -- when you talk about saddam hussein and even mubarak, they were more secular. now it seems that its the religious calafate. its all about one religion or one part of one religion fighting another. these religious wars, can they ever be won? >> well, its a very goo...

Going to heaven when they die. the iraqi secular army and the afghan secular army are not willing to die for karzai and maleky. its the same thing that happened in south vietnam. the communists were willing to die. >> right. >> but the south veems were not. you cant win like that. now, if they have americans with them, that emboldens them to defend. >> you know what though? when i look at the foreign policy scandals that we have been covering in the last week, i think about the veterans more tha...

>> you know whats interesting is when we go into a country and we leave, there is a vacuum created and it seems like al qaeda is coming. in we are going to leave afghanistan and there is no question the taliban is coming back. so, if -- when you talk about saddam hussein and even mubarak, they were more secular. now it seems that its the religious calafate. its all about one religion or one part of one religion fighting another. these religious wars, can they ever be won? >> well, its a very goo...

If the secretary of state or the president is not moving to fill this position, n an expeditious manner, then folks draw from that that this is not very high up on the priority list. >> nina? >> you know, i agree with that this is a -- this may just be a symbolic, mostly symbolic position. this is a subcrisis on the foreign policy or on the foreign stage. the number of religious persecutions is on the rise even in the internet society. charles says jews and christians. secular agency that says 8...

Know, so more and more states will do that particularly the north and and the west. so there is -- we aree becoming a more secular nation. its true weth still maintain a high level of religiosity. is that a sphwhord.inta >> religiosity, sure. >> we are becoming more secular especially among younger people, thats becoming the trend of the future, is it not? >> bill, even if it isnt afut word. if you are big enough if you> say it becomes a word. >> word of the day.yo >> its religiosity.ecom there ...