on 1. yes, training secular opposition types of/for the Syrian struggle using real estate in Jordan as the place to do that.
on 2. yes, the magnitude of the penetrance of of secularism, seperation of church and state and establishment of secular liberty (that is government and rules distinct from religious institutions and rules) has not swept the globe as widely as the notion of demacracy itself.
Folks are warm to democracy, but less warm to the separation and so on. In the far western democracies the effort is to prevent the tyranny of the majority (the obvious pitfall of a clerical state, believe and do as my god says or feel the wrath, regardless of how democratic it is).
Rather than single out Islam, I am inclined to just suggest that there are many fledgling democracies that have not fully vetted and considered the tyranny of the majority concept. IN the end that does not matter, the current clutch of Islamic Democratic Republics seems largely comfortable with dictatorship by majority, with notions of a limit to state (10th amendment, 14th amendment, separation clause) absent in these new democratic experiments.
Far western democracies have a spotty record on this as well, but they at least try and do have a solid liberal academic elite to try to enforce this notion (and on occasion the support of the courts)
Israel is obviously not a secular state, and obviously does not follow policies of a secular state, and obviously follows policies of land adoption and property rights based largely on scripture, that land is eminently domained based on faith and capital ... this is the truth of that state.
Perhaps Israel should be the model lens for US foreign policy in such areas. Clerical states, that mostly get it right, but can be remarkably beligerant in some ways.
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