Afghanistan

• Summary
• Adherents
• Religious Freedom
• Socio-economic
• Public Opinion

Religious Adherents1	Afghanistan	South-Central Asia	World
Baha'i	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%
Buddhist	0.0%	1.5%	5.8%
Chinese Universalist	0.0%	0.0%	5.8%
Christian	0.0%	4.7%	33.3%
Confucianist	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
Ethnoreligionist	0.0%	3.0%	4.0%
Hindu	0.4%	52.6%	13.6%
Jain	0.0%	0.3%	0.1%
Jewish	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%
Muslim	99.5%	35.2%	20.8%
Shintoist	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
Sikh	0.0%	1.3%	0.3%
Spiritist	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%
Taoist	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
Zoroastrian	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
Other Religions	0.0%	0.0%	1.6%
Neo-religions	0.0%	0.0%	--
Non-religious	0.0%	1.6%	11.7%
Atheist	0.0%	0.3%	2.3%

Religious Demography

The country has an area of 402,356 square miles and a population of 31 million. Reliable data on religious demography is not available because an official nationwide census has not been conducted in decades. Observers estimate that 80 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim; 19 percent is Shi'a Muslim; and other religious groups make up less than 1 percent of the population. There is a small, hidden Christian community; there are no reliable figures on its size, but estimates range from 500 to 8,000. There are roughly 3,000 Sikh and Hindu believers and more than 400 Afghans who are followers of the Baha'i faith. In addition, there are small numbers of adherents of other religious groups, mostly Buddhist foreigners. Traditionally, the dominant religion has been the sect of Sunni Islam that follows the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. For the last 200 years, Sunnis often have looked to the example of the Darul Uloom madrassah located in Deoband near Delhi, India. The Deobandi school has long sought to purify Islam by discarding supposedly un-Islamic accretions to the faith and reemphasizing the models that it believes were established in the Qur'an and the customary practices of Muhammad. Additionally, Deobandi scholars often have opposed what they perceive as Western influences. Much of the population in Afghanistan adhered to Deobandi-influenced Hanafi Sunnism, but a sizable minority adhered to a more mystical version of Islam, generally known as Sufism. Sufism centers on orders or brotherhoods that follow charismatic religious leaders. Members of the same religious group have traditionally concentrated in certain regions. Sunni Muslim Pashtuns centered around the city of Kandahar and dominated the south and east of the country. The homeland of the Shi'a Hazaras was in the Hazarajat, the mountainous central highlands around Bamyan. Northeastern provinces traditionally have had Ismaili populations. Other areas, including Kabul, the capital, were more heterogeneous and included large Sunni, Shi'a, Hindu, Sikh and Baha'i populations. Similarly, the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif included a mix of Sunnis (including ethnic Pashtuns, Turkmen, Uzbeks, and Tajiks) and Shi'a (Hazaras and Qizilbash), including Shi'a Ismailis. In the past, small communities of Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and Christians lived in the country; however, most members of these communities emigrated during the years of civil war and Taliban rule. Even at their peak, these non-Muslim minorities constituted less than one percent of the population. Most of the small Hindu and Sikh populations, which once numbered approximately 50,000 persons, took refuge abroad during the many years of conflict; however, there is a small population of native-Afghan Hindus and Sikhs that never left. In total, non-Muslims, including Hindus, Sikhs, Baha'is and Jews, were estimated to number in the hundreds at the end of Taliban rule. Since the fall of the Taliban a number of religious minorities have returned. During the reporting period, there were approximately 3,000 Sikhs and Hindus living in the country. There are seven gurdwaras, Sikh places of worship, in Kabul, where worshippers generally were free to visit, and few threats were reported. The Hindu population, which is less distinguishable than the Sikh population whose men wear a particular headdress, faced little harassment. There were approximately six Hindu temples in four cities. An additional eighteen were destroyed during the many years of war. There is one Christian church and one synagogue. Some who converted to Christianity as refugees have returned. Others may have been born abroad into other religious groups. The Baha'i faith has had followers in Afghanistan for approximately 150 years. The community is predominantly based in Kabul, where more than 300 Baha'i members live, but another 100 are said to live in other parts of Afghanistan.²

Sources

Note: All country histories and flags were obtained from The World Factbook, 2008.

^1.  The World Christian Database (WCD) is based on the 2600-page award-winning World Christian Encyclopedia and World Christian Trends, first published in 1982 and revised in 2001. This extensive work on World religion is now completely updated and integrated into the WCD online database. Designed for both the casual user and research scholar, information is readily available on religious activities, growth rates, religious literature, worker activity, and demographic statistics. Additional secular data is incorporated on population, health, education, and communications. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. Used with permission.

^2.  The U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom report is submitted to Congress annually by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. This report supplements the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. These State Department reports are open source.