Religion
Primarily Shiite, the town was cut off almost entirely by Saddam after the Gulf War. Historically, however, Samawah has been a mixed Jewish and Shia city. The terrorisation of the Jewish minority by Arab nationalists in the 1940s and '50s drove most of them into exile. The Torat Synagogue, which has been abandoned since the flight of the Jews, still exists in the qushla quarter of the east bank of Samawah. In 1979-81 an ethnic cleansing campaign saw Shia Iraqis deemed to be of Persian origin deported by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein.
Today, there is still a small population of Assyrian Christians in the city.
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“If ... we admit a divinity, why not divine worship? and if worship, why not religion to teach this worship? and if a religion, why not the Christian, if a better cannot be assigned, and it be already established by the laws of our country, and handed down to us from our forefathers?”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)