page_title: Iraqis
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Iraqis / Religion
caption_attribution_description: English: Imam Ali Mosque - Shrine of: 1st Shia Imam - Ali ibn Abi Talib; Prophet Adam; Prophet Nuh. (Najaf, Iraq)
context_page_description: The Iraqi people are people identified with the country of Iraq.
  Iraqi Arabs are the largest Semitic people in Iraq, while Kurds are the largest non-Semitic ethnic group and largest ethnic minority. Iraqi Turkmen are the third largest ethnic group in the country. The majority of Mesopotamian Arabs are also largely descendants of pre-Islamic indigenous peoples until they adopted the Arab identity in the 7th century during the Islamic conquest, and although Arab migrations may have taken place, they were minor and largely insignificant to the genetic demography of the region.
  The population was estimated to be 40,194,216 in 2018 and over 10 million living in the diaspora, with most of the population being Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, followed by Kurds, Assyrians and Armenians, Turkmen, Afro-Iraqis, Yazidis and Shabaks. Other minorities include Mandeans, Roma and Circassians. The most spoken languages are Mesopotamian Arabic, Kurdish, Syriac and Iraqi Turkmen dialects. The percentages of different ethno-religious groups residing in Iraq vary from source to source due to the last Iraqi census having taken place over 30 years ago. A new census of Iraq is planned to take place in 2020.
context_section_description: Iraq has many devout followers of its religions. In 1968 the Iraqi constitution established Islam as the official religion of the state as the majority of Iraqis (97%) are Muslim (predominantly Shīʻī, but also including minority Sunni).
  In addition to Islam, many Iraqi people are Christians belonging to various Christian denominations. The majority of Iraqi Christians are ethnic Chaldo-Assyrians, whilst non-Syriac Christians are mostly Iraqi Arabs and Armenians. Iraqi-Assyrians largely belong to belong to the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East, and the Syriac Catholic Church. Iraqi Arab Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church of Antioch, and Iraqi-Armenians belong to the Armenian Orthodox Church and Armenian Catholic Church. Their numbers inside Iraq have dwindled to around 500,000+ following the US invasion of Iraq.
  Other religious groups include Mandaeans, Shabaks, Yazidis and followers of other minority religions. Furthermore, Jews had also been present in Iraq in significant numbers historically, and Iraq had the largest Jewish population in the Middle East, but their population dwindled, after virtually all of them migrated to Israel between 1949 and 1952. From 1949 to 1951, 104,000 Jews were evacuated from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nechemia (named after the Jewish leaders who took their people back to Jerusalem from exile in Babylonia beginning in 597 B.C.E.); another 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran.
caption: The Imām ‘Alī Mosque in Najaf, Iraq
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