The gift that keeps on spinning: Fouad Ajami predicted that American troops would be welcomed as liberators. You would never guess from his new book.

• Author: Caryl, Christian
• Position: The Foreigner's Gift - Book review

The Foreigner's Gift By Fouad Ajami Free Press, $26.00

The promise and the predicament of Fouad Ajami's new book are eatly encapsulated in one of its opening scenes. It is the summer of 2005, and a friend of the author's, a minister in the transition government of Iraq, has invited Ajami along with him to an audience with the most influential man in the country: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Most Americans couldn't pick Sistani out of a police line-up, much less describe his role. And yet, as Ajami rightly argues, it is Sistani more than any terrorist, military commander, or elected politician in the country--who has used his power to decide the fate of Iraq at several critical junctures over the past three years.

Sistani is a jurist, an authority on Islamic law who runs the prestigious seminary in the holy city of Najaf. In his role as a maria al-taqlid, a "source of emulation," he is a living exemplar of the spiritual values that almost every Iraqi Shiite holds dear. That means that he commands the passionate loyalty of the majority of Iraq's population (most of whom, of course, are Shiites). And yet he has never sought out the media or courted the crowd. As Ajami writes, "I was not prepared for the simplicity of Sistani's house; it was a few steps removed from the shops, in the middle of an ordinary alleyway." Inside, the furniture seems to consist primarily of floor cushions; there is no air conditioning, quite a significant omission in those parts. Finally the Grand Ayatollah makes his appearance, strikingly affable in contrast to the severe public countenance that stares out of posters around the country. But he gets straight to the point with his visitors: "The country was in the throes of a decisive fight over a new constitution," writes Ajami, "and Sistani's message to the man of the government was unambiguous. 'I want you to do everything you can to bring our Sunni Arab brothers into the fold.'" Sistani then presses for a change in the election laws to ensure that the Sunnis are given a greater share of power. "'You are the elected government; the people voted for you; they went to the polls under mortar rounds.'"

It's a remarkable encounter, and Ajami's account of it shows him at his best the American public intellectual uniquely equipped, by background and learning, to explain the intricacies of Arab politics to American readers. The offspring of a prominent Lebanese Shiite family, Ajami is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the editorial board of Foreign Affairs, and the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International...