The recent car-bomb assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister marks the start of a “new and dangerous chapter in Middle East politics,” an expert on contemporary Islam said Thursday.

“What we are seeing is a very different kind of game opening up from the first chapter, as it were, of removing Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a democratic leader in Iraq,” said Akbar Ahmed, a professor of international relations at American University.

Ahmed presented a Hall Center for the Humanities lecture Thursday at Woodruff Auditorium at Kansas University. He will play host to a 90-minute colloquium at 10 a.m. today in the Hall Center conference room. The event is free and open to the public.

The conflict in Iraq, Ahmed said, “is now very much regional with unknown consequences.”

The United States on Wednesday recalled its ambassador to Syria in protest of Syria’s interference in Lebanon’s affairs.

On Thursday, President Bush urged Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon.

Syrian forces are suspected of planting a car bomb that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 11 other people. A popular figure, Hariri was known for his criticism of Syria.

“Here is what’s happening,” Ahmed said. “Syria and Iran are clearly going to present a united front. This creates a depth in territory for those who may want to destabilize the American-backed presence in Iraq.”

This front, he said, likely will spread to Pakistan where “there are something like 30 to 25 million Shias who will have a natural sympathy for Iran.”

The author of several books on Islam, Ahmed often appears on CNN, MSNBC and NBC Nightly News. He has been on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” three times.

Before coming to the United States, Ahmed held several senior government positions in Pakistan. He was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2000.

After 9-11, Ahmed hit the lecture circuit to counteract the often-distorted images of Islam.

Ahmed pinned much of the Islamic world’s troubles on the ever-widening gap between rich and poor.

6News video: Famed Islamic scholar delivers Hall Center lecture (02-17-05) The Globalist: Akbar Ahmed

“If you got to Cairo (Egypt) or Karachi (Pakistan) today, you will see people living in huge palaces and in the middle of shanty towns,” Ahmed said. “When you combine that with a very unsatisfactory rate of illiteracy and unemployment, the result is a sense of loss, of hopelessness, of despair. And people begin to say and to believe ‘Our culture — our great and glorious culture — has somehow been perverted and distorted.’ It is a loss of honor, of self, of identity.

“When this happens, societies tend to become violent, defensive and imbalanced,” Ahmed said. “This is what we are seeing in many parts of the world.”