New York
Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani, an Iraqi American and president of the largest Shia Muslim congregation in North America, speaks perfect English. He sits with quiet dignity in his mosque, the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens, New York. Middle aged and slender, with a neat salt-and-pepper beard, he is draped in robes and wears a turban. Yet his words are anything but alien--rather, they are startlingly direct, articulate, and even familiar, at least to supporters of President George W. Bush and his vision for the future of the Middle East.

"The problem in Arab countries is simple," Sheikh Al-Sahlani says. "We are ruled by dictators. We want this to end. I cannot trust any Arab regime," he continues. "None of them has ever helped us. They did not accept Iraqi refugees after the [Gulf] war, except for some who were admitted to Syria. Only America helped us by taking in many refugees, and now there are thousands of us here. Only America really helped us," he repeats. "If the United States removes Saddam's fascist regime, I will support them. But also, we live here and we are loyal."

I told Sheikh Al-Sahlani how much his comments resembled those of President Bush himself and of Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary and point man for the strategy of regional transition to democracy. He nodded, with a smile. "We understand them," he said. He described the impact of Wolfowitz's recent visit to Iraqis living in Dearborn, Michigan, and said, "Many believe a change in American

A week before, in a Manhattan restaurant, I'd heard a similar message from another Iraqi-American religious figure, Sheikh Kedhim Sadiq Mohammed of the Islamic Guidance Center, a Shia mosque in Brooklyn that serves a large Hispanic, African-American, and Arab-American community. "I am telling all the Arabs the moment has come to support the United States, to see the end of this evil dictatorship in Iraq," he said. "Many of them do not know how to react, but I am telling them to trust the Americans. I am an American citizen and I am loyal to President Bush."

I interviewed Sheikh Al-Sahlani on the night of March 9, after the annual Shia religious procession in midtown Manhattan, called to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, at the battle of Kerbala--the defining event in the history of the Shia sect. (I had been invited to address the gathering.) Following the procession, in the main hall of the Al-Khoei mosque, a Pakistani-American medical doctor and religious teacher of great eloquence, Sakhawat Hussain, described the events at Kerbala, in which Imam Hussein and a small party of his supporters were killed at the order of tyrants who had seized control of the Muslim community.

The battle of Kerbala occurred in the year 680. Yet as Dr. Hussain preached to a gathering of hundreds that evening in Queens, grown men wailed at the evocation of Imam Hussein's death and the slaying of his infant son in his arms as if it had happened yesterday. Young men came forward bare to the waist, and began rhythmically beating their breasts in grief at the bloodshed so many centuries past.