Following the fall of the Sunni-dominated Baathist regime in Iraq, Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned in in 2004 about the rise of a religious-political movement based on Shiite political Islam in the Middle East, which he called the “Shiite Crescent” and later the "Iranian Crescent." This crescent stretches from Iran to the Gulf to Iraq and then Lebanon.
But now this same area is witnessing a new Shiism that opposes political Islam and is calling for secular democracy. Indeed, some religious leaders in the main three countries of the crescent — Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon — are developing a new theology that supports secularism.