Demographics of Iraq
97% of Iraqis follow Islam: 61% Shia and 34% Sunni. 1% of these describe themselves as "Just a Muslim". According to the CIA Factbook, Shias make up 60% of population, while Sunnis 35%. Christianity accounts for 5%, and the rest practice Mandaeism, Yazidism and other religions.
Freedom of religion in Syria
Syria's eighteen million population is a mosaic of ethnically, culturally, and religiously distinct communities. Ninety percent of the Syrians adhere to an Arab identity; another roughly nine percent is Kurdish, Armenian, Circassian, and Turkomans filling out the mix. It is estimated that Sunni Muslims make up seventy-four percent of Syria's overall population. As such, Sunnis provide the central symbolic and cultural orientation. Of these, a minority are of the Yazidi faith, reducing the core Sunni Arab majority to roughly two-thirds of the populace. Approximately another sixteen percent of the population, while Arab in ethnicity, consists of a few Twelver Shi`a, and various offshoots of Shi'a Islam – Alawite, Druze, and Isma'ilis. The 'Alawis are by far the largest community in the category of non-Sunni Muslims. Their number is estimated at eleven percent of the overall population. Christians, of various Eastern Orthodox and Uniate traditions and the Latin Rite, along with a smattering of Protestants, make up ten percent of the population. Syria's Arab Jewish community has, to a great extent, disappeared as a result of emigration in the early 1990s. In 1993, it was reported that there were 3,655 individuals of the Jewish faith comprising 584 families distributed throughout the various Syrian governantes.