Shia–Sunni relations
Shia–Sunni discord in Iraq starts with disagreement over the relative population of the two groups. According to most sources, including the CIA's "World Factbook", the majority of Iraqis are Shia Arab Muslims (60%-70%), and Sunni Arab Muslims represent between 32% and 37% of the population. However, Sunni are split ethnically among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. Many Sunnis hotly dispute their minority status, including ex-Iraqi Ambassador Faruq Ziada, and many believe Shia majority is "a myth spread by America". One Sunni belief shared by Jordan's King Abdullah as well as his then Defense Minister Shaalan is that Shia numbers in Iraq were inflated by Iranian Shias crossing the border. Shia scholar Vali Nasr believes the election turnout in summer and December 2005 confirmed a strong Shia majority in Iraq.
Iraqi Americans
However, according to the 2000 Census, in which it states that just under 90,000 people born in Iraq are resident in the United States. It has also covered information on the residents ancestry or ethnic origin, which show 33,000 people claiming only "Iraqi" ancestry, nearly 38,000 if those who wrote in another reply as well as "Iraqi" are included. A further 82,000 people were reported as "Assyrians/Chaldean/Syriac," who are Christians. Nearly 206,000 others gave their ancestry as "Arabic" without specifying a country of origin, and many of them are likely to be from Iraq. Of those reporting Iraqi ancestry, 29 percent live in Michigan; 22% live in Texas and 20% in Illinois. Of those reporting Assyrian ancestry, 42 percent live in Michigan. California has nearly 20 percent of the Iraqi American population.