There are two branches of Islam present in Iraq, the Shiites (Or Shia) and Sunni. Similar to Iran and Bahrain, Iraq has a Shiites majority. This majority has, however, not been able to exercise much political power until the 2000's, with the removal of President Saddam Hussein and his...
IRAQ: SHIA/SUNNI DIVISIONS HARDENKarlos Zurutuza
ReligionsMuslim (official) 95-98% (Shia 64-69%, Sunni 29-34%), Christian 1% (includes Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Assyrian Church of the East), other 1-4% (2015 est.) note:while there has been voluntary relocation of many Christian families to northern Iraq, the overall Christian pop...
According to the Iraqi constitution, the next step was to elect a president, prime minister and speaker. The first should be representative of the Kurdish community, the second should be Shia, and the third should be Sunni. And the choice should be based on the consensus of the country's ...
Neither have the Saudis, the mortal Sunni enemies of the Shia Iranians. Certain pundits have, but not their governments. This is a watershed moment, things that Americans and the world trusted to remain as they were will no longer be the same, and we will not be the better for it. ...
While these groups have several similarities, mostly in religion, as all of these groups have a Muslim religious majority, they also have some differences, particularly in which branch of Islam they follow, notably Sunni and Shia. There are also other religions in Iraq, such as Christianity and...
"It drifted away from forming a government based on 'national unity' to a 'majority government'."In Iraq's power-sharing arrangement, the country's president is a Kurd, its prime minister a Shia and the parliament speaker is a Sunni. Elections were held in October 2021, two years after ...
The call to arms by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al- Sistani was the most urgent sign yet of the growing desperation of the country's Shia majority in the face of a resurgent Sunni militant movement drawn from the insurgency in neighbouring Syria and vestige...
But what we can do is to make sure that the kind of systemic and broad-based aggression that we've seen out of ISIL that terrorizes primarily Muslims, Shia, Sunni — terrorizes Kurds, terrorizes not just Iraqis, but people throughout the region, that that is degraded [Emphasis added by ...
During Saddam’s regime, only Sunni Muslims held real power. However, with the overthrow of his regime, the Shia majority acquired greater power and influence. In addition to the power shift between Sunni and Shia Muslims, the Iraqi people have also gained greater freedom to express their relig...