Sunnis In Iraq Refuse To Accept Their Minority Status

Here.

Or, rather, it is not just that they refuse to accept their minority status and loss of power, but that they refuse to believe that they constitute a minority, and despite all the demographic data — what are facts when there are many other things instead of facts that are more pleasing to believe — are convinced that they, the Sunni Arabs, constitute a plurality — at least 42% — and for some, an outright majority, of Iraq’s population. Sunni Arabs in fact constitute a mere 19% of the population, Shi’a Arabs three times that number. But the Sunni Arabs, who have dominated modern Iraq since it was cobbled together bo the British from three Ottoman vilayets, have managed to convince themselves that because they held power, and always dominated, therefore they must be the majority. And this assurance only increases their sense of resentment, at the loss of that power.

They don’t say — the writer of the WStJ article doesn’t deal with this — that the Kurds, being mostly Sunni, should be counted in the “Sunni” column. They know that the Kurds are apart, and shouldn’t count in any toting up of numbers because, after all, it’s only the Arabs who count in the Arab Republic Of Iraq.

Beginning ten years ago, I kept posting a sentence that went like this: “The Shi’a will never relinquish the power they have now attained, and the Sunni will never acquiesce in their loss of power, in Iraq.” I sometimes added that the Sunnis were convinced that they were more numerous than the Shi’a, and nothing would disabuse them. These observations, repeated almost verbatim, apply still. For more on this subject, going way back, simply google, first, ” sunnis shi’a acquiesce relinquish hugh fitzgerald iraq” and, in a differernt googling, “Sunnis Iraq 42% hugh fitzgerald.”