His cousin's husband was shot dead in a sectarian attack in Karachi just a week earlier, he added.
And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way.
In 1991, his brother was shot and wounded in a sectarian attack.
He didn't allow anyone in the hospital to speak in a sectarian way.
Another priority is to prevent Iraq being engulfed in a sectarian civil war much like that in Syria.
In recent months, however, he has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unity but as a participant in a sectarian war.
"We don't think in a sectarian manner," he said in a previous interview with The New York Times in November 2002.
In the book McCann imparts various pearls of wisdom to the Spanish immigrant and his family on how to cope with living in a sectarian, fractured society.
We will be tied by blood to one side in a sectarian civil war that seems likely to spread in an unpredictable fashion.
Each of five black banners draped along the outer wall spelled out the name of a worshiper who had been killed recently in a sectarian attack.
The GOE has urged Maliki not to deal with the Iraqi people in a sectarian way, and to amend to constitution to allow greater Sunni representation.
