- Summary
- Adherents
- Religious Freedom
- Socio-economic
- Public Opinion
Religious Adherents1 |
Algeria | Northern Africa | World |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baha'i | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Buddhist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 5.8% |
| Chinese Universalist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 5.8% |
| Christian | 0.2% | 9.0% | 33.3% |
| Confucianist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Ethnoreligionist | 0.0% | 2.2% | 4.0% |
| Hindu | 0.0% | 0.0% | 13.6% |
| Jain | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Jewish | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.2% |
| Muslim | 96.9% | 87.6% | 20.8% |
| Shintoist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Sikh | 0.0% | 0.0% | 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 | 3.0% | 1.1% | 11.7% |
| Atheist | 0.0% | 0.1% | 2.3% |
Religious Demography
The country has an area of 919,595 square miles and a population of 33 million. More than 99 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim. There is a small community of Ibadi Muslims in Ghardaia. Official data on the number of non-Muslim citizens is not available; however, practitioners reported it to be less than five thousand. The vast majority of Christians and Jews fled the country following independence from France in 1962. Many of those who remained emigrated in the 1990s due to violent acts of terrorism committed by Islamic extremists. According to Christian community leaders, Methodists and members of other Protestant denominations account for the largest numbers of non-Muslims, followed by Roman Catholics and Seventh-day Adventists. There are three thousand members of evangelical churches (mostly in the Kabylie region) and three hundred Catholics. A significant proportion of the country's Christian alien residents are students and illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to reach Europe; their numbers are difficult to estimate. For security reasons, due mainly to the civil conflict, Christians concentrated in the large cities of Algiers, Annaba, and Oran in the mid-1990s. During the period covered by this report, evangelical proselytizing led to increases in the size of the Christian community in the eastern Berber region of Kabylie. The number of "house churches," where members meet secretly in the homes of fellow members for fear of exposure or because they cannot finance the construction of a church, reportedly increased in the region. Reporting suggests that citizens themselves, not foreigners, make up the majority of those actively proselytizing in Kabylie. One missionary group operated in the country on a full-time basis. Other evangelistic groups visited the country but are not established. While most Christians did not proselytize actively, they reported that conversions took place. There was no active Jewish community, although a very small number of Jews continue to live in Algiers. Since 1994 the size of the Jewish community has diminished to virtual nonexistence due to fears of terrorist violence, and the synagogue in Algiers remained closed.2
Sources
Note: All country profiles, maps, and flags are taken from The World Factbook, 2005.
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.
