Albright: Beware the Religious Divide

May 2, 2006— -- Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has lived a life steeped in politics, diplomacy and religion.

In her new book, "The Mighty and the Almighty," she argues that it is crucial to understand how religion affects the world.

Albright, who served as secretary during President Clinton's second term, immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia when she was 11 and became a U.S. citizen when she was 20. Her father, Josef Korbel, was a professor of international relations at the University of Colorado and taught current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice, Albright said, was her father's favorite student.

"I think it's kind of amazing that this Czechoslovakian immigrant actually trained two women secretaries of state," said Albright, who believes that illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship.

Although both secretaries were close to Korbel, Rice went on to become a Republican and work for the Bush administration, whose policies sometimes strongly clash with Albright's views.

"I think that what President Bush did after 9/11 was exactly right," she said. "I think he rallied the world and frankly, there was agreement with us across the board because people would say they were not on the side of those who had flown airplanes into the twin towers. But when President Bush asked people to be for everything that America does -- Iraq, Abu Ghraib, various aspects of the way we've been conducting our policy -- then he narrowed the number of countries that can be for us."

Albright, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997, said that she did not believe in a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, but that there were "serious differences in the way people regard religion."

When she became the first female secretary of state in 1997, Albright said that there were no Muslims serving in senior positions in the government.

"We did not know enough [then] about how the future was going to be regarded as a religious divide," she said.

Today, the world is facing the most chaotic situation Albright said she had ever seen. To fix it, Albright said, America needs to reach out to religious moderates.