BACKGROUND. Uzbekistan is more than 80 percent Muslim. The majority of the country's Muslims are Sunni and regard themselves as followers of the Hannafi branch of Sunnism. In the Stalin era, Muslim clerics suffered persecution, as did Christian clerics throughout the Soviet Union, because they opposed the Soviet regime ...
Kazakhstan is home to more than 100 ethnic groups and more than 40 faiths. Ethnic Kazakhs are primarily Sunni Muslims. The Slavic people of the country are traditionally Orthodox Christians. There are many other congregations and also a smaller Jewish community.
Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school is the recognized religious tradition of Tajikistan since 2009. According to a 2009 U.S. State Department release, the population of Tajikistan is 98% Muslim, (approximately 95% Sunni and 3% Shia), with some Sufi orders.
Most Muslims in Turkey are Sunni Muslims forming about 90%, and Shia-Aleviler (Alevis, Ja'faris and Alawites) denominations in total form up to 10% of the Muslim population.
Shi'a Islam in Uzbekistan is a small minority sect, composed almost entirely of ethnic-Iranians. There are only three registered Shi'a mosques in the country, two in Samarkand and one in Bukhara; both of these cities have residents of Iranian descent.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a majority Muslim country with 98% of the population following Sunni Islam while a small minority follow Shiite branches. There are also about 20,000 to 32,000 Druze living mostly in the north of Jordan, even though most Druze no longer consider themselves Muslim.
The state religion in Qatar is Islam. Most Qataris belong to the Sunni sect of Islam. Shiites comprise around 10% of Qatar's Muslim population.
The Muslim population is approximately 85% Shi'a and 15% Sunni; differences traditionally have not been defined sharply. Azerbaijan has the second highest Shia population percentage in the world after Iran.
Although Syria has no official religion, 85 percent of the population is Muslim, and of these, 85 percent are members of the Sunni sect (i.e. 72 percent of the total population).
Islam is practiced by 90% of Egyptians. Most Egyptian Muslims are Sunni and follow the Maliki school of jurisprudence, though all legal schools are represented. Shi'a Muslims make up a small minority.
Islam is the state-religion in Oman. The country is 95% Muslim. 45% of the Muslim population of Oman follow Sunni Islam and 45% follow Ibadi Islam. Islam spread to Oman in the early years.
Most Omanis (about three-quarters of the country) belong to the Ibadi Muslim faith—meaning they are followers of the Abd Allah ibn Ibad—but there are some Shia and Sunni Muslims as well. Oman is the only country in the Muslim world with an Ibadi-majority population.
Islam is the official state religion in Tunisia. According to CIA, 99.1% of its adherents are Sunni Muslims. The constitution of Tunisia states that the country's “religion is Islam”, the government is the “guardian of religion”, and requires that the president be Muslim.
The official state religion is Wahhabi Sunni Islam, though Qatari culture is, in many respects, strikingly more liberal than its Wahhabi neighbor, Saudi Arabia. The expatriate community is made up of Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and small groups of Buddhists and Baha'is.
According to the federal Ministry of Religious Affairs, more than 99 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim. Members of other religious groups combined constitute less than 1 percent of the population and include a small Christian community, a small Sufi Muslim community, and an unknown number of Shia Muslims.
The vast majority of Muslims in Sudan adhere to Sunni Islam of Maliki school of jurisprudence, deeply influenced with Sufism. There are also some Shia communities in Khartoum, the capital.
They are mostly the descendants of refugees who entered the country in the 1940s and 1950s and are mostly Sunni Muslims but also include Christians.
Today's Afghanistan can be considered 99% Muslim. There is a rough 3/4 to 1/4 split in favor of Sunni Muslims to Shia. Though recent history has been defined by growing religious intolerance and sectarian conflict, Afghanistan does have marginal adherents of other religions.
The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist nationalist and pro-Pashtun movement founded in the early 1990s that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until October 2001.
Although more than half of Bahrain's population consists of Shia Muslims (estimated at over 75 percent), the Sunni royal family, Al Khalifa, governs the country.
Islam in Iran can be categorised into two periods: Sunni Islam as a majority from the 7th century to the 15th century, and Shia Islam as a majority from the 16th century onwards.
While it's a common practice in Islamic and Western nations for the two to pray together, the practice is unheard of in the India subcontinent and completely out of the question in Lucknow.
The 2008 Constitution of Maldives designates Sunni Islam as the state religion. Only Sunni Muslims are allowed to hold citizenship in the country and citizens may practice Sunni Islam only.
Shias comprise a majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, and a plurality in Lebanon, while Sunnis make up the majority of more than forty countries from Morocco to Indonesia.
Most Libyans are Muslim, and the vast majority are Sunnis. There are also very small minorities of Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians.