"By inserting it into the constitution you are forming law based on religious dictates," Ms Arat says.
Other factors have had an impact on Russian dress habits, including a rebellion against religious dictates that women must be covered, Mr. Vassiliev said.
That doesn't change the fact that tension exists between religious dictates and personal desires, and that increasingly, people follow their own desires and reject religion's decrees.
Why are they forgotten?" Equally, though, the Taliban war on education has strengthened the resolve of Pakistani leaders who see no choice but to stand up against the militants' cultural and religious dictates.
But there is no simple way to distinguish between the religious "dictates" that might make voters nervous and the religious "values" that politicians — particularly Christian politicians — so frequently pledge to uphold.
American expatriates see them as a means of maintaining their own cultural preferences, for free mixing of the sexes and the availability of alcohol and uncensored movies, within the strict Wahhabi religious dictates of Saudi society.
Houellebecq's insight is to suggest how surprisingly congenial the new religious dictates prove to be for many among the Parisian intellectuals: there are comfortable salaries subsidized by the Gulf States and multiple compliant young wives for the male professors.
The danger of the "charitable choice" legislation is that religious organizations will increasingly hire and fire people for their social service programs on the basis of religion, or may even reject people for holding beliefs that go against religious dictates, such as favoring abortion or homosexual rights.
Things got tougher, though, as we tried to find our way without the religious dictates that had guided us for so long: the importance of marriage to family, its sacrifices and requirements, the role of children, the idea that God wants you to be married.
