There followed a short, unhappy period with the New York City Department of Welfare, and almost three decades with the International Rescue Committee, a non-sectarian agency for political and religious refugees, where he worked with individual refugees on resettlement and representation at hearings.
No one will," says Adeeb Awad, a church official in Lebanon, where a sectarian political system ensures representation by quota; the country's non-executive president must, for instance, be a Christian.Some Christians even predict a total exodus from the region.
Thus far, the House of Saud's response to the Arab awakening has been to deny reforms at home while casting Bahrain's struggle for representation as a sectarian plot concocted by Iran's Shiite theocrats.
But the overwhelming desire thus far in democracies in Arab countries has been for representation, first and foremost, on a sectarian or ethnic basis.
Sadr believes that quota system, which was brought in after the 2003 invasion to ensure representation among the country's various sectarian groups, is hampering the country's progress.
In contrast, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and to the European Parliament are conducted by the single-transferable-vote formula, a form of proportional representation that virtually guarantees representation for the various sectarian parties.
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.
Alain Aoun, a member of parliament from the predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement, disagreed, and said that the new system "lessens sectarian tensions, which usually stem from a feeling of injustice in the representation of certain communities".
As the violence raised fears of outright sectarian war, Hezbollah and its allies struck a deal that gave them far greater representation in the government.
