"A secular state does not mean that the people are atheists, " Erdogan told a television show in Cairo.
The primacy of a secular state was solidified when the First Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights.
The country does not collect its own statistics on religion in accordance with laws enshrining France's status as a secular state.
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Take India, which once aspired to be a secular state, and whose constitution calls for a uniform civil code for all citizens.
He described himself as a Muslim prime minister of a secular state.
The declaration stated that Sudan should be a secular state or, failing this, that the south should be able to exercise the right of self-determination.
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Ennahda, which was banned under Ben Ali, says it has modelled itself on Turkey's governing AK Party, another Muslim-majority country which has remained a secular state.
Obama chose Turkey, a more secular state, as the site of his first presidential speech to a Muslim majority nation, on April 6.
At the center of the new Great Game is Moscow's effort to put the squeeze on Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim state whose President, Heydar Aliyev, once a member of the Soviet Politburo, welcomes Western investment.
And given Turkey's history as a secular democratic state that respects the rule of law, but is also a majority Muslim nation, it plays a critical role I think in helping to shape mutual understanding and stability and peace not only in its neighborhood but around the world.
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But the late (Jewish-born) Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, was a staunch defender of the secular state as a bulwark against all forms of fundamentalism.
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Mr el Mahdi wants talks with the government based on the principle of a democratic, secular state.
It is, of course, one thing to pick off a God-believing, pro-war Democrat senator like Lieberman in a secular and liberal state like Connecticut.
When suggesting turning a secular into a religious state, the religious should worry about getting what they ask for.
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The country had been set up as a homeland for Indian Muslims, but it had been a more or less secular state, as envisaged by its founder, the clean-shaven, tweed-jacketed, and Anglicized Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
It may also be a good sign that Mrs Tuksal and her friends have begun a joint education project with secular feminists and the Religious Affairs Directorate, a state agency.
The clash between these two visions of Egypt -- secular with freedom and social justice, or a religious state run by the Brotherhood with its version of Sharia law -- played out inside families and on the streets.
After the first post-dictatorship democratic elections in 1999, 12 of the northern Muslim states adopted sharia law, putting an enormous strain on the unity of a Nigerian state that had previously been run only under the secular, civil law bequeathed to it by British colonial rulers.
In most European countries, except secular France, Christian churches have inherited a privileged link with the state.
While Iraq's Kurds retreat back to their own secular enclave in the north, Iranian evangelists are promoting the virtues of a religious state.
The Turkish parliament is currently discussing a new constitution, with the Turkish and Kurdish leaders seeking to renegotiate the foundation of the secular state drawn up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s.
After the meeting, the pontiff perfomed a ritual expected of all visiting heads of state, laying a wreath at the enormous tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secular general who founded the modern Turkish Republic.
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