ABSTRACT
‘Iraq is an Arabic-speaking country, and is filled with a vigorous, rejuvenated Arabic national spirit, but it has a totally different background from the desert-bred Arabian states. The young ‘Iraqi State is wide awake to the necessity of a proper education of its youth, and also has the means of pursuing this policy on a broad basis and to furnish their schools with all the modern equipment needed. The Shi’is, at least in 'Iraq, are in some respects more fanatical and more Francophobe than the Sunnis. Another substantial minority are the Jews, through whose hands a large percentage of the Iraqian commerce flows. Besides the large community of Babylonian Jews in ‘Iraq, there exists an equally large group of Oriental Christians —Assyrians and Jacobites, Chaldeans and Armenians. Immersion with the Mandaeans has nothing to do with the Christian conception of baptism as a symbol of the redemption from spiritual evil, the power of sin, and the domination of Satan.
