Islam is the unexploded bomb of global politics. US foreign policy – the only foreign policy there is, for the United States is the only superpower – proceeds from the hope that a modern and democratic Islam will emerge from the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Through democratic institutions, Washington believes, the long-marginalized Shi’ites will adapt to religious pluralism. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s Islam, fixed in amber since the High Middle Ages, will metamorphose into something like American mainline Protestantism. Full Story