A New Muslim Order (Paperback)  | Released: 01 May 2008

Nicolas Pelham explores how America’s overthrow of the Baath partyin Iraq, and the failures of Washington’s post-invasion regime spawned a Shiite revolution in the heartland of the Arab world. Through first hand accounts from Saddam’s rule to that of the post-Bremer rulers, he traces the turning of the tables from a Sunni- to Shia-led state. Pelham recounts how Shia clerics led the largest protests the region had seen since the Iranian Revolution to topple Paul Bremer, America’s Shah in Iraq. As Washington struggled to back peddle, Pelham reveals how the Ayatollahs’ drive for elections won power for their acolytes to draft the constitution for a utopian Shia state.About the Author: Nicolas Pelham has spent 20 years studying, writing and broadcasting in the Middle East and North Africa. He has lived in Damascus, Cairo, Rabat and most recently Baghdad, where he covered the US occupation as a correspondent for The Economist and Financial Times. He nowworks in Jerusalem as a senior analyst for the Brussels-based think-tank, International Crisis GroupTable of Contents: Introduction and Acknowledgements � Section 1: Before the Fall � From Trilby to Turbans � Stirring in the Shia Slums � Cracks in the Sunni Bulwark � Section 2: Unravelling Iraq � The Scramble for Shia Succession � Foreigners Come Gobbling � The American Shah of Iraq � The Reconstruction Myth � The Quiet Ayatollah�s Regime-Change � America�s Exiles Carve Up the Spoils � Section 3: Balkanisation of the Broken State � From Baathism to Jihad � The Sunni Arab Emirates � The Local Hero and the Fighting Arm of Hizbollah � Regime-Change and the Baathist Interregnum � The Staying Power of the Shia � The Country Once Called Iraq � Section 4: The Regional Wars of Religion � The Reawakening of Arab Shiism � The Two Stripes of the Arab World: Shia Protestantism and the Sunni Counter-Reformation � Map of Shiites in Selected Countries � Table of Muslim Population in the Middle East by State and Sect � Bibliography � Index