 According to the Iranian law, Shias are not allowed to build mosques in Sunni majority areas and vice versa.Syria is approximately three quarters Sunni, but its government is predominantly Alawite, a Shia sect that makes up less than 15% of the population.Under Hafez al-Assad, Alawites dominated the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, a secular Arab nationalist party which had ruled Syria under a state of emergency from 1963 to 2011.