If the First Lady wears a headscarf, maintained the secular minded elite, the whole secular system could be undermined.

In countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, military interventions have disfigured the original intent and contents of the constitutions and thwarted the evolution of a secular system.

Turkey, however, scores 24, worse even than Tunisia s authoritarian secular regime.

In 2009 a new body was formed, the Australian Secular Lobby , to promote secular education in Australia.

But the Malaysian constitution provides room for arguments on both sides of the question, and the relatively secular status quo is facing a serious challenge.

Turkey's secular, capitalistic, democratic order has become especially valuable to the Bush administration as it seeks to integrate the wider Middle East into the world system by liberalizing its economy and democratizing its polity.

One solution is to enforce secular modernization by oppressing the poor and their religious organizations.

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.

Nor does the old secular religious divide have much salience anymore.

It is in this context that the abortive Palestinian Mecca Agreement between the religious (Hamas) and the secular (Fatah) to form a national unity government for Palestine might have established a new paradigm for the future of regime change in the Arab world.

Now art is something that in the secular world, we think very highly of. We think art is really, really important.

Papal authority stands on shaky ground, especially in the comparatively secular West.

No one shall be silent anymore. Tunisia is an Islamic republic. Destroy democracy.

Anti Taliban and secular activist Tarek Fatah ( TarekFatah) replied to him criticizing Jinnah s ideology Jinnah was lying and he knew he was lying dhume.

But these steps are unlikely to defuse tensions between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan s government and Turkey s military, which sees itself as the guardian of the country s secular state.

Suddenly, however, this secular commitment is no longer so clear.

The recent assassination of the secular Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid has raised the stakes for women there.

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

Most have had the support and blessing of Erdoğan, who has exploited them to discredit the old secular guard and cement his rule.

Such arguments have limited appeal in the largely secular world of Western philosophy.

He will continue, instead, to preach against the evils of secular society and the dangerous temptations of liberalism.

The people in the modern world, in the secular world, who are interested in matters of the spirit, in matters of the mind, in higher soul like concerns, tend to be isolated individuals.

In the 1920 s and 1930 s the years of Atutűrk s rule the new Turkish women became the icon of the modern, secular regime.

If relatively secular Turkish society could be swept by a surge of anti American sentiment, so, too, can Indonesia society.

Noted secularist Ram Puniyani had a perspective along similar lines, saying that the court's ruling is tantamount to curtailing civil liberties. In his words

Secular writer, Kacem El Ghazali ( emkacel), now Zurich based famed Moroccan blogger and activist, also shared his opinion about the matter on his Facebook page

Since 1991, Japan has been mired in what Harvard economist Alvin Hansen, a contemporary of Keynes, once described as secular stagnation.

Indeed, though environmentalists and secular youth spearheaded the protest movement, it became remarkably diverse and inclusive almost overnight.

But while the officer corps may be steadfast defenders of secular rule, the rank and file reflects Pakistani society.

There are also similarities between Ezra the priest scribe (but not high priest) and Nehemiah the secular governor on the one hand and Joshua and Zerubbabel on the other hand.

Given that the fight against the common enemy, the secularist old guard, has been decisively won, an eventual break between Erdoğan and the Gülenists is perhaps inevitable.

Indeed, on the night of the coup, these ultra conservative Islamists appeared together with military leaders and the secular political leader Mohamed ElBaradei to announce Morsi s overthrow.

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.

Moreover, in a case brought to the Constitutional Court, the AKP s support for the amendment was used as evidence that the party was violating Turkey s secular constitution.

Bhutto, the leader of a secular party that now enjoys substantial support in Washington, would dominate policy planning in the next government at Musharraf s expense.

By contrast, Turkey s large, secular intellectual community, whose cultural background is European, and from which the Turkish state recruits most of its executives, has remained in Istanbul and Ankara.

In Iran, apart from senior commanders, who were either killed or fled the country, the Shah s powerful, staunchly secular army switched sides to Khomeini s revolutionary government virtually overnight.

The situation is more byzantine, but just as politicized, in Turkey, where prosecutors and judges have consistently set their sights on the moderately Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the name of protecting the secular constitution.

I would just sum up the way things look, at least from this secular perspective, as far as compassion and the golden rule go, by saying that it's good news that compassion and the golden rule are in some sense built into human nature.

After all, the victory of the secular Awami National Party (ANP) in Pakistan s North West Frontier Province is a strong indication that people there have rejected religious political forces and violence.

The Blue System. The Violet. It's all there.

It is in this context that the historic compromise between the religious (Hamas) and the secular (Fatah) to form a national unity government for Palestine might have established a new paradigm for the future of regime change in the Arab world.

Indeed, Egypt s formidably historic task now is to refute the old paradigm according to which the Arab world s only choice is between secular and repressive autocracy or obscurantist and repressive theocracy.

Indeed, India was alone in the non aligned movement in supporting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980 s, and it also desperately supported the secular Northern Alliance after the Taliban victory of the 1990 s.

The American preference for making anti communist allies, however unsavory, tied Washington to Pakistan s increasingly Islamist dictatorship, while India s non aligned democracy drifted toward the secular Soviet embrace.