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Islam has been the state religion in Egypt since the amendment of the second article of the Egyptian constitution in the year 1980, before which Egypt was recognized as a secular country. The vast majority of Egyptian Muslims are Sunni, with a small Mu'tazila , Shia Twelvers and the Shia Ismaili communities making up the remainder. [ 65 ]
In a 2012 Global Religious based survey conducted by Gallup showed the percentage of people who identify as religious, with the highest being 96, Iraq came in at 88 and Saudi Arabia at 75. Meanwhile, the Global Atheism Index for the same year shows the percent of self-identified atheist in Iraq at 0 and in Saudi Arabia at 5.
While in the same 2018 Wave survey, 47.2% of Egyptians said they were religious, 39.8% said they were somewhat religious and 10.4% said they were not religious. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] In the same Arab Barometer 2018 Wave V survey it was reported that, 90.4% said they were Muslim, 9.6% said they were Christian, and 0.1% said they had no religion.
For approximately a millennium, the Abrahamic religions have been predominant throughout all of the Middle East. [1] [2] [3] The Abrahamic tradition itself and the three best-known Abrahamic religions originate from the Middle East: Judaism and Christianity emerged in the Levant in the 6th century BCE and the 1st century CE, respectively, while Islam emerged in Arabia in the 7th century CE.
Native Egyptian religion had at least a somewhat substantial effect on Graeco-Roman polytheism; in Egypt itself however, native religion likely felt little other effects from the new pagan rulers, [15] until the advent of Christianity. Although Augustus built new temples and repaired existing ones in Egypt, Roman religious involvement in the ...
Christians remain the most persecuted religious group in the Middle East, and Christians in Iraq are “close to extinction”. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] According to estimates by the US State Department , the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen from 1.2 million 2011 to 120,000 in 2024, and the number in Syria from 1.5 million to 300,000, falls ...
Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala. A 2003 CIA Factbook map which shows the distribution of ethnoreligious groups in Iraq.. Religion in Iraq dates back to Ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia between circa 3500 BC and 400 AD, after which they largely gave way to Judaism, followed by Syriac Christianity and later to Islam.
The vast majority of Egyptian Christians are Copts who belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox Church. [2] [3] As of 2019, Copts in Egypt make up approximately 10 percent of the nation's population, [4] with an estimated population of 9.5 million (figure cited in the Wall Street Journal, 2017) [5] or 10 million (figure cited in the Associated Press, 2019). [6]