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Religion in Egypt controls many aspects of social life and is endorsed by law. The state religion of Egypt is Islam , although estimates vary greatly in the absence of official statistics. Since the 2006 census , religion has been excluded, and thus available statistics are estimates made by religious and non-governmental agencies.
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.
Islam is the dominant religion in Egypt, with approximately 90% of Egyptians identifying as Muslims. [1] The majority of Egyptian Muslims are adherents of Sunni Islam, [2] while a small minority adhere to Shia Islam. [3] Since 1980, Islam has served as Egypt's state religion. [4]
However, Shi'a make up the slight majority in areas of Iraq, [9] and Bahrain. [10] Christianity is the second largest religion, with over 20 million Christians in “total” living in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Syria, Kuwait and Jordan. There are smaller Jewish populations living mainly in the western part of the Arab world.
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 ...
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]
Egyptian religion produced the temples and tombs which are ancient Egypt's most enduring monuments, but it also influenced other cultures. In pharaonic times many of its symbols, such as the sphinx and winged solar disk , were adopted by other cultures across the Mediterranean and Near East, as were some of its deities, such as Bes .