"For every action there is an equal and positive reaction." According to Faleh Jabar, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and featured panelist, this law of physics easily applies to society as well. When one sector of society acts, whether religious or secular, another sector reacts. Three spheres of religion—popular, clerical, and political—interact and react with secular Iraqi society.

To explore this an other issues on April 21, 2004 the United States Institute of Peace and The Faith & Politics Institute cosponsored a special Capitol Hill panel discussion on the actions and reactions of politics and religion in Iraq. Moderated by David Smock, director of the Religion and Peacemaking Initiative at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the panel discussion was followed by a moderated question and answer session.

Speakers

• Faleh A. Jabar is currently a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Prior to his Institute fellowship, he was a research fellow at the School of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, University of London. Since 1994 he has directed the Iraqi Cultural Forum Research Group, at Birkbeck College. He is author of The Shi'ite Movement in Iraq and editor of Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues: State, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq. He has written and edited several books in Arabic, including State and Civil Society in Iraq and The Impossible Democracy: The Case of Iraq. Areas of specialization include the Middle East, Iraq, democratization, rule of law, religious conflict, political Islam, and civil society. Jabar received his Ph.D. in sociology from Birkbeck College, University of London.
• Amatzia Baram is currently a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Prior to his Institute fellowship, he was a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa, Israel. He has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, Georgetown University, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, St. Antony's College (Oxford), and Hebrew University's School for Advanced Studies. Baram directed the Jewish-Arab Center and the Gustav Heinemann Middle East Institute at the University of Haifa from 1999 to 2002. Baram specializes in the Middle East, Iraq, political Islam, civil-military relations, territorial and low-intensity conflict, and civil society. He received his Ph.D. from the department of History of Islamic Countries at Hebrew University.
• David R. Smock (Moderator) is director of the U.S. Institute of Peace's Religion and Peacemaking Initiative. His areas of specialization include, Africa, religion and peacemaking, ethnic conflict, and mediation. He is author of Religious Perspectives on War and Perspectives on Pacifism. He is editor of Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding, Making War and Waging Peace: Foreign Intervention in Africa, and co-editor of African Conflict Resolution: The U.S. Role in Peacemaking. Smock specializes in the areas of religion and peacemaking, as well as ethnic conflict. He received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Cornell University and holds a M.Div. from New York Theological Seminary.