It wants to put right misunderstandings about the French secular state and the obligations of religious groups.
Mr el Mahdi wants talks with the government based on the principle of a democratic, secular state.
"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.
Obama chose Turkey, a more secular state, as the site of his first presidential speech to a Muslim majority nation, on April 6.
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.
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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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.
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.
There are no nativity plays in France's strictly secular state schools, no carol-singers in the streets and almost no Christmas cards two per person on average, compared with 28 in Britain, and then usually as greetings for the new year.
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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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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In Egypt, secular means freedom from state control of religion, not nonreligious.
This has been applied even in the most minor cases, such as lending secular textbooks or reimbursement for state tests.
And secular groups also point out that while state school pupils are "protected" from creationist teaching, similar guidelines do not exist to cover children who attend private religious schools - Christian, Jewish and Muslim.
It is supposed to be an alternative to the secular justice system formerly run by the Syrian state and to operate in parallel with it.
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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.
As the third and independent authority of the State, the Egyptian Judiciary is comprised of secular and religious courts, administrative, non-administrative courts and a Supreme Constitutional Court, and penal courts, civil and commercial courts, personal status and family courts, national security courts, labour courts, military courts, as well as other specialized courts or circuits.
One reason is their century-old secular tradition, which fiercely defends the separation of faith and state, and makes most French people uneasy about conspicuous religion.
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.
Most schools in Flanders are state-funded but church-run (and pretty secular in outlook).
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