Religious and Ethnic Landscape
Syria’s eighteen million population is a mosaic of ethnically, culturally, and religiously distinct communities. In the cradle of civilizations, ninety percent of the population is Arab in ethnicity; another roughly nine percent is Kurdish, with Armenians, Circassians, 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 – ‘Alawis, 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 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.
Read more about this topic: Freedom Of Religion In Syria
Famous quotes containing the words religious and, religious, ethnic and/or landscape:
“When we say “science” we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they can understand—that seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.”
—Yi-Fu Tuan (b. 1930)