Religion
According to the CIA World Factbook, Library of Congress, Oxford University, over 97% of the population of Pakistan is Muslim and the remaining 3% is Christian, Hindu and others. Majority of the Muslims practice Sunni Islam with Shi'as being the minority who make up 10–15%.
Nearly all Pakistani Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi school, although there are some Hanbalis and Ahlul Hadeeth. The majority of Shia Muslims belong to the Ithnā‘Ashariyyah branch, while a smaller number practice Ismailism. There are small non-Muslim religious groups, including Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis, Bahá'ís and Zoroastrians (Parsis).
The religious breakdown of the Pakistani population is as follows:
- Muslims: 181,723,000
- Christians: 2,700,000 (approx. 1.8%)
- Hindus: 1,800,000 (approx. 1.6%)
- Buddhists: 50,000
- Sikhs: 30,000
- Zoroastrian/Parsis: 25,000 (many are undocumented migrants from Iran)
- Jews: 200
- Animists, Baha'i, Atheists: n/a
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Pakistan
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One’s religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success.”
—J.M. (James Matthew)
“All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)