Yunus Laco, an Alevi who applied this year for a state position, received some oddly sectarian questions in his oral examinations.
He did not answer questions about why the administration had not made adequate contingency plans for the rise of Sunni insurgents or for the outbreak of sectarian war, questions that President Bush has also sidestepped in interviews dating to the 2004 election campaign.
"How can a nation provide such a wonderful example of resistance and sacrifice," he asked, "while promoting sectarian differences?" Good question.
From the fetid alleys of Imbaba, the Cairo neighborhood where Muslims and Christians have fought street battles, to the Syrian countryside, where a particularly deadly crackdown has raised fears of sectarian score-settling, the question of identity may help determine whether the Arab Spring flowers or withers.
The war already has sectarian overtones, but the question is what happens if Bashar al-Assad falls, when the Alawites no longer have their own traffic lane, Druze are no longer accorded special protection by sympathetic checkpoint guards, and the Sunni majority takes the greater power many analysts expect they would have in a post-Assad Syria.
"In the past, there was no question it was sectarian, there were sectarian elements to what happened to me and people want to bury their head about that.
Desperate odds A showdown looms Higher rates can wait Unblinking Putin ReprintsFor the outside world the litany of beheadings, massacres and sectarian hatred raises two questions.
First a monk, then by 423 bishop of Cyrrhus, near Antioch, Theodoret evangelized the region and contended with Christian sectarians in doctrinal questions giving rise to several treatises on apologetics, the systematic exposition of Christian faith, one of which, Therapeutikē ("The Cure for Pagan Evils"), has become a minor classic.
Khalilzad said, "Mr. President, the big question is the sectarian violence".
But there is significant sectarian violence, there's no question about that," he said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
