"What do the American people think of Ayatollah Khomeini?” an Iranian TV reporter asked me on my first visit to Tehran in 1999. For a moment I was stumped. If I answered truthfully, I would have to say that the vast majority of Americans had never heard of Khomeini. But Iranian hardliners might easily exploit this observation. And so I simply suggested that most Americans didn’t follow international politics—this was the task of a foreign policy elite whose opinions on Iran were as divided as ever.

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In recent weeks I have given a lot of thought to the flap over Barack Obama’s assertion that economic frustration inclines people to “cling to guns or religion.” Beyond the domestic debate, the hullabaloo provoked by the Senator’s remarks offers a useful point of departure to probe the complex motivations that animate Islamist movements and ideologies.

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Last week, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Shi’ite militants in the port city of Basra to surrender their weapons. When they called his bluff, he extended the offer by a full week, underscoring the great risk that Maliki had undertaken in pursuing a military solution to the conflict with the fiery cleric Muqtada Sadr and his “Mahdi Army.” In today’s Iraq, political clout ultimately flows from the barrel of many guns. Thus Sadr’s thousands of loyal followers will not disarm. This was the message that Sadr implicitly telegraphed to the government in his “9 point response” to Maliki’s demands.

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Some years back my wife and I befriended three Moroccan brothers who had been summarily locked up for 10 years by the late king of Morocco. Tossed into a cell with little light and a ceiling so low that one of the brothers developed a hunched back, they were only released after a human rights campaign in France secured their freedom. One brother finally came to America, where he settled down in a small town in Texas. There he wrote his memoirs and discovered a kind of happiness, surrounded by people who new little of the world he came from, but who were kind and welcoming.

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Recently I agreed to become a regular contributor to washingtonpost.com's provocative blog on religion and politics: “On Faith.” My mission: to elucidate the intricate mysteries of Islamist politics. Something about my reputation for scholarly honesty and objectivity-- I was told--bolstered by my work with Arab democratic activists, suggested that I could make a compelling addition to the On Faith team! Who was I to argue?

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