Minorities in Iraq include various ethnic and religious groups. The Kurds, Assyrians, and Iraqi Turkmen represent the three largest non-Arab minorities in the country. Other smaller ethnic groups include Armenians, Roma, Shabak, Yezidi, Mandeans, Mhallami, Circassians and Persians. There are also small Palestinian and Chechen minorities, and small numbers of Bedouins, Iranians, Azeris, Jews and Georgians.
Religious groups include Sunni Arabs, Christians, Mandeans, Iraqi Jews, Yazidis, Yarsan, Shabak, Zoroastrians and Bahá'ís.
Some groups are both religious and ethnic minorities, these are Assyrians, Mandeans, Yazidis, Shabaks, Armenians, Roma, Kurdish Yarsan, Mhallami and Jews, as well as the small numbers of Kurdish and Turcoman Christians.
These groups have not enjoyed equal status with the majority Arab populations throughout Iraq's eighty-five year history. Like the Shi'a Muslims, the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'th Party harshly oppressed these minorities during its rule of Iraq. Under Ba'athist rule, Iraq, despite being one of the most multi-ethnic and multi-religious countries in the Near East, these groups were forced to deny their identities under Ba'ath rule, and particularly under Saddam Hussein's process of Arabization. The situation of the Kurds, however, has changed since the toppling of the Ba'ath party.
Read more about Minorities In Iraq: Kurds, Assyrians, Iraqi Turkmen, Mandaeans, Other Groups, Assaults On Minority Groups Since 2003
Famous quotes containing the word minorities:
“We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)