History
In March 1963 a military coup installed a secular, Baath socialist regime dominated by minority sects. In 1970, an Alawi ruler, Hafez al-Assad, seized the presidency (he was succeeded by his son, Bashar al-Asad, in 2000). The most intractable challenge to Baathist rule has come from Sunni Islamic groups, most notably, the Muslim Brotherhood. The first Islamic uprising was in 1964 in Hama; other such sectarian disturbances followed in 1967, 1973 and from 1976-85.
Iraqi refugees—estimated at nearly 2 million, or close to 10% of the Syrian population, in 2007—comprise all Iraqi religions, including Sunnis and Twelver Shia, as well as a disproportionate number of Christians. The most notable effect on Syria's religious balance has been the increased size of the resident Twelver Shia community in Syria, which was previously minimal.
Read more about this topic: Islam In Syria
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“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)