Each July, Northern Ireland's traditional Orange Order parades raise sectarian passions to the boiling point.
But both Sunni and Shiite power players are seizing on religious symbols and sowing sectarian passions that are rippling across the region.
The militiamen were told to change their trademark black warriors' outfit for civilian garb, to leave their guns at home, and to avoid inflaming sectarian passions.
Had the surge happened in 2003, when it should have, it might have prevented the kindling of all of Iraq's sectarian passions.
In both advance and retreat our empire did some very bad things (including the failure to contain rising sectarian passions in India).
In compensation, John Tiffany's production makes brilliantly manifest one of the book's background themes: the violent sectarian passions of Ayrshire life.
The Queen highlighted the impressive resilience of Enniskillen, whose Protestant and Catholic residents long avoided succumbing to the worst of Northern Ireland's sectarian passions.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said on Monday that some Parliament members were to blame for the instability, alleging that they were exploiting sectarian passions for their own political interests.
Sheik Abdullah Humedi, the tribal leader from Nineveh, warned that the torture revelations had once more inflamed sectarian passions and could plunge the country into a fresh cycle of violence.
And along with the sectarian passions of civil war, some residents express yearnings for starkly opposite visions of the future: either for a return of the relative stability of the Assad government or for the promises of Islamic rule.
