Iraqis in Greece
The Iraqi Arabs who arrived in Greece are Muslims from the central and southern parts of Iraq, mostly Sunni with a tiny Shia minority. Sunni Arabs form 17 per cent of the total Iraqi population, which is almost an equal amount if not more than their Turkmen counterparts. Assyrians have a disproportionately large representation amongst Iraqis in Greece, this could be primarily because Greece has a Christian society, in which Iraqi Christians will find it easy to settle down in. Forming a quarter of the population in Greece, Iraqi Christians make up the majority of Christians from the Middle East, who arrived in Greece from the early 1990s.
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.