A tolerant society

Like the city where the photo was taken, Samarra (125 km north of Baghdad), this family, at the foot of the famous ziggurat-shaped minaret in the 9th century mosque, is mixed-faith: husband and wife belong to different religious communities, in this case Shiite and Sunni. This was the norm for marriages in the country, whose children adopted one faith or the other depending on whether the parents were practicing Muslims, so as to preserve both traditions. Showing your religious faith was considered bad manners, and people learnt the faith of their friends and neighbours when invited to their respective celebrations.

Population distribution in Baghdad and the other big cities was defined more by socio-economic structures than by faith, although the poorest social sectors were generally Shiites.

Following the 2003 invasion, the sectarian violence of the para-governmental Shiite groups divided Baghdad and other cities into religious ghettos, leading to a mass exodus in 2006 of the Sunni population and other religious minorities, such as the different Christian communities. The same happened in the cities in the South. Before the invasion, Iraqi Christians of different denominations made up 12% of the population (1.2 million people). During the occupation, Shiite sectarian, pro-government militias forced them to flee in terror: it is thought that in the middle of 2006, half the Christian population of Iraq had left the country.