Religions
See also: Freedom of religion in Bahrain| Men | Women | TOTAL | Bahraini | Non-Bahraini | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muslims | 511,135 | 355,753 | 866,888 | 567,229 | 299,659 |
| Others | 257,279 | 110,414 | 367,683 | 1,170 | 366,513 |
| Total | 768,414 | 466,157 | 1,234,571 | 568,399 | 666,172 |
| Muslim % | 70.2% | 99.8% | 45.0% |
Islam is the official religion. The citizen population is 99.8% Muslim, although the Muslim proportion falls to 70.2% when the non-national population is included. Current census data doesn't differentiate between the other religions in Bahrain, but there are about 1,000 Christian citizens and about 40 Jewish citizens.
Muslims belong to the Shi'a and Sunni branches of Islam. There are no official figures, but the Shi'a constitute 66-70% of the Bahraini Muslim population. Foreigners, overwhelmingly from South Asia and other Arab countries, constituted 54% of the population in 2010. Of these, 45% are Muslim and 55% are non-Muslim, including Christians (primarily: Catholic, Protestant, Syrian Orthodox, and Mar Thoma from South India), Hindus, Bahá'ís, Buddhists, and Sikhs.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Bahrain
Famous quotes containing the word religions:
“All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“Deism is good sense not yet instructed by revelation, and other religions are good sense perverted by superstition. All sects differ, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)