But how did a reactionary 17th-century English sectarian end up as the symbolic hero of a global movement that espouses freedom, fairness and justice?
A few weeks ago, Mr. Obama told The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg that the Saudis are not only among "free rider" allies that ask the United States to fight their battles for them and "exploit" American muscle for their own narrow, sectarian end, but are also responsible for encouraging anti-American militancy (his sanitized expression of spreading radical Islamic jihadi ideology).
"These groups were unified by the same goal, which is getting rid of this sectarian government, ending this corrupt army and negotiating to form the Sunni Region," Abu Karam, a senior Baathist leader and a former high-ranking army officer told the New York Times.
As I walked through the neighborhood, I thought of my late maternal grandparents, who had lived through neighboring Lebanon's fifteen years of civil sectarian bloodletting, ending in 1990.
But the tide of sectarian killing, ending several hundred lives, that followed the bomb blast has made the prospect worryingly real.To thousands of bereaved Iraqis, the war was already upon them, even before the shrine was bombed.
She said, as she had before, that "I regret the way the president used" the authority to make war in Iraq that she had joined in giving him, and now felt that, with a permanent Iraqi government almost complete, it is the Iraqis' responsibility to curb sectarian violence, end the insurrection and get about rebuilding the country.
"We came back in October 2008, when the sectarian war was ending.
· National reconciliation requires an urgent commitment to moderation and ending sectarian violence by integrating all Iraqis into the political process.
He has discussed how to end sectarian violence with the Northern Ireland secretary John Reid, and is considering standing in next May's Stormont elections.
In a significant change of its traditional policies, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A., approved the agreement to end sectarian warfare in Northern Ireland.
