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Largest religion in Egypt

Islam is the dominant religion in Egypt, with approximately 90% of Egyptians identifying as Muslims. The majority of Egyptian Muslims are adherents of Sunni Islam, while a small minority adhere to Shia Islam. Since 1980, Islam has served as Egypt's state religion. Due to the lack of a religious census, owing to the alleged undercounting of non Muslim minorities in Egyptian censuses, the actual percentage of Muslims is unknown; the percentage of Egyptian Christians, who are the second largest religious group in the country, is estimated to be between 6% and 11% of the population. A study at the University of Kent, citing a 2018 survey by Arab Barometer, stated that around 11% of Egyptians identified themselves as not religious. While in the same 2018 Wave survey, 47.2% of Egyptians said they were religious, 39.8% said they were somewhat religious and 10.4% said they were not religious. In the same Arab Barometer 2018 Wave V survey it was reported that, 90.4% said they were Muslim, 9.6% said they were Christian, and 0.1% said they had no religion. Prior to the French campaign in Egypt and Syria under Napoleon Bonaparte, almost all of Egypt's educational, legal, public health, and social welfare issues were in the hands of religious functionaries. Under the Ottoman Empire, the public and political roles of the ulama (i. e., Muslim religious scholars) were reinforced, in an effective continuation of the policies of the Mamluk Sultanate. Traditionally, political divisions in the country were based on religious divisions. During the 19th and 20th centuries, successive governments made extensive efforts to limit the role of the ulama in public life, and religious institutions were increasingly brought under closer levels of state control. After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the new government assumed responsibility for appointing officials to mosques and Islamic schools. Likewise, it mandated the reform of Al Azhar University, beginning in 1961. These policies permitted department heads to be drawn from outside the ranks of the traditionally trained orthodox ulama.

Muslim rulers remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Fatimid Caliphate. With the end of the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco Circassian military caste, took control about 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies. The mid 14th century Black Death killed about 40% of the country's population. In the late 10th century, the Shia Ismaili caliphate of the Fatimids made Egypt their centre and Cairo their capital. Egypt flourished and the Fatimids developed an extensive trade network in both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Their trade and diplomatic ties extended all the way to China and its Song Dynasty, which eventually determined the economic course of Egypt during the High Middle Ages. Many traces of Fatimid architecture exist in Cairo today, the most defining examples include the Al Azhar University and the Al Hakim mosque. The Fatimid palace in Cairo had two parts. It stood in the Khan el Khalili area on Bin El Qasryn street. In the early 20th century, Egyptian Islam was a complex and diverse religion. Although Muslims agreed on the faith's basic tenets, the country's various social groups and classes applied Islam differently in their daily lives. The literate theologians of Al Azhar University generally rejected the version of Islam practiced by illiterate religious preachers and peasants in the countryside. Most upper and upper middle class Muslims believed either that religious expression was a private matter for each individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in public life. Islamic religious revival movements, whose appeal cut across class lines, were present in most cities and in many villages.

Muhammad Ali, who assumed power in Egypt in the early 1800s, nationalized all land, including hundreds of thousands of hectares of land belonging to Al Azhar Mosque, putting the funding of that institution under state control. Awqaf, traditionally independent endowments for mosques and Islamic schools, became a ministry of the government. In 1961, Gamal Abdel Nasser made Al Azhar part of the Ministry of Awqaf or Religious Endowments. He also made the appointment of the grand sheikh the prerogative of the Egyptian president, just as the appointment of any other state official. In time,the school became responsible for assigning imams to all major mosques, and all these imams were required to be graduates of the school.

Orthodox ulama or "the religious establishment" found themselves in a difficult position during the wave of Islamic activism that swept through Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s. Most Ulama, including those of Al Azhar University, are employees of the Egyptian state who "recognize the regime’s primacy, support its stability, and legitimize its policies". Radical Islamists viewed them as puppets of the status quo. To maintain their influence in the country, the ulama espoused more conservative stances. After 1974, for example, many al Azhar ulama, who had acquiesced to family planning initiatives in the 1960s, openly criticized government efforts at population control. The ulama also supported moves to reform the country's legal code to conform to Islamic teaching. They remained, nonetheless, comparatively moderate; they were largely loyal to the government and condemned the violence of radical Islamist groups. Outside of the state mosques are more than 40,000 independent mosques throughout Egypt. Popular Islam ranges from informal prayer sessions or Qur'an study to organized cults or orders. Because of the pervasive sexual segregation of Egypt's Islamic society, men and women often practice their religion in different ways. A specifically female religious custom is the Zār, a ceremony for helping women placate spirits who are believed to have possessed them. Women specially trained by their mothers or other women in zar lore organize the ceremonies. A zar organizer holds weekly meetings and employs music and dance to induce ecstatic trances in possessed women. Wealthy women sometimes pay to have private zars conducted in their homes; these zars are more elaborate than public ones, last for several days, and sometimes involve efforts to exorcise spirits. However, while once common, the zar is rarely practiced today, under fire for its perception as a religious heresy. The young "sheikhs" deliver their sermons over the Internet, on private satellite channels and in sports clubs, away from the control of Al Azhar and the state. although many Sufis are thought to have voted for the Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice Party. The devotions of many Sufi orders center on various forms of the dhikr, a ceremony at which music, body movements, and chants induce a state of ecstatic trance in the disciples. Since the early 1970s, there has been a revival of interest in Sufism. Egypt's contemporary Sufis tend to be young, college educated men in professional careers. still others say that while 15 million are registered as Sufis, "the true figure is likely to be higher". Participation at the festivals (moulids) the Sufi orders organize, is perhaps twice that (and includes women and children). The moulids are a major manifestation of Sufi Islam in Egypt, and are held in honor of holy men and women (In Egypt the term Moulid is not reserved for Muslim festivals and may be in honor of Christian, and until recently Jewish holy men). Sufi Muslim moulids not only venerate the prophet Muhammad and his descendants (such as Hussein, the second son of the fourth Caliph Ali whose moulid in Cairo can draws crowds of more than a million people), but founders of Sufi orders, down to dozens of lesser known sheikhs celebrated mostly in remote rural communities. The largest moulid in Egypt takes place in Tanta, which draws an even larger number of pilgrims than hajj in Mecca. As many as three million Egyptians and other Arabs gather there every October to celebrate the life of Sayid Ahmad al Badawi, a thirteenth century Sufi leader. Scholar Tarek Osman describes Salafis before the 2011 revolution as the "most important or pervasive Islamic force in the country" with an influence "many times more than that of organized political Islam." With "no history of violence, no organizational structure, no manifestos and no obvious political ambitions", they were tolerated by the Mubarak regime and ignored by the news media. The Salafi movement benefited from government support the 1990s when the government hoped to "combat and undermine" the violence of the Jihadi Salafi al Gama'a al Islamiyya with the preaching of the apolitical Salafis. second place after the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Al‑Nour party itself won 111 of the 127 seats. Sufi Islam is a sore point with Salafi Muslims. Salafi and other Islamists believe Sufi tombs are unIslamic and have sometimes sabotaged or vandalized tombs and moulids.

Non sectarian Muslims who reject the authority of hadith, known as Quranists, Quraniyoon, or Ahl al Quran, are also present in Egypt. During the early 20th century, the ideas of Egyptian Quranists like Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi (1881–1920) are thought to have grown out of Salafism – specifically a rejection of taqlid. Notable Egyptian Quranists include Sidqi, Rashad Khalifa, Ahmed Subhy Mansour, and Tawfik Hamid.

While almost all of Egypt's Muslims are Sunni, there are a small number of Shia. (Estimates of their number range from 800,000 to "at most" three million.) The Syrian civil war has brought on an increase in anti Shia rhetoric by Sunnis, and in at least one case bloodshed. In June 2013 a mob of several hundred, including Muslim brotherhood members, attacked a house in the village of Abu Musallim near Cairo, dragging four Shia worshipers through the street before lynching them. Eight other Shia were injured.

The Ahmadiyya movement in Egypt, which numbers up to 50,000 adherents in the country, was established in 1922 but has seen an increase in hostility and government repression as of the 21st century. The Al Azhar University has denounced the Ahmadis and Ahmadis have been hounded by police along with other Muslim groups deemed to be deviant under Egypt's defamation laws. On 15 March 2010, nine Ahmadis were detained due to their adherence to the movement.

There are a significant amount of Nondenominational Muslims in Egypt. Roughly twelve percent of Egyptians, when asked about their religious affiliation, answered that they were "just a Muslim" or "just Muslim". Their lack of identifying with a particular sect was noteworthy. Besides Kosovo, Egypt has had the largest positive net change of Muslims identifying as non denominational Muslims. Roughly five percent of Egyptian Muslims who were raised in a different affiliation began identifying as non denominational Muslims as adults.

The Ministry of Awqaf or Religious Endowments, oversees mosques in Egypt. The ministry assigns ulama to registered mosques, which critics complain inevitably involves favoritism and political connections. In the wake of the 2013 coup the state imposed tighter controls on mosques. The Awqaf Ministry command the mosques be locked between prayer times and took control of donation boxes. Critics have complained that the actions of Awqaf reflect the government that controls them. Mahmoud Zakzouk, Minister of Awqaf from 1995 to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, was appointed by Mubarak and dismissed at his overthrow. Under the Mohamed Morsi government, critics alleged the Muslim Brotherhood put "its allies in high positions". And under the post coup government the new Awqaf minister is reportedly "quietly purging all Brotherhood appointees".

The hijab became more unpopular with educated women, including devout Muslims, in the early 20th century as the British authorities discouraged it and as women sought to gain modern positions of power. The hijab became more popular in the 1970s, with women choosing to adopt it. In 2012, Misr International films was producing a television series based on the novel Zaat by Sonallah Ibrahim. Filming of scenes set at Ain Shams University was scheduled to occur that year, but Muslim Brotherhood student members and some teachers at the school protested, stating that the 1970s era clothing worn by the actresses was indecent and would not allow filming unless the clothing was changed. Gaby Khoury, the head of the film company, stated that engineering department head Sherif Hammad "insisted that the filming should stop and that we would be reimbursed explaining that he was not able to guarantee the protection of the materials or the artists."

Islamic political activism has a lengthy history in Egypt. Several Islamic political groups started soon after World War I ended. The most well known Islamic political organization is the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimun, also known as the Brotherhood), founded in 1928 by Hassan al Banna. After World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood acquired a reputation as a radical group prepared to use violence to achieve its religious goals. The group was implicated in several assassinations, including the murder of one prime minister. The Brotherhood had contacts with the Free Officers before the 1952 Revolution and supported most of their initial policies. The Brotherhood, however, soon came into conflict with Gamal Abdel Nasser. The government accused the Brotherhood of complicity in an alleged 1954 plot to assassinate the president and imprisoned many of the group's leaders. In the 1970s, Anwar Sadat amnestied the leaders and permitted them to resume some of their activities. But by that time, the Brotherhood was divided into at least three factions. The more militant faction was committed to a policy of political opposition to the government. A second faction advocated peaceful withdrawal from society and the creation, to the extent possible, of a separate, parallel society based upon Islamic values and law. The dominant moderate group advocated cooperation with the regime. The Muslim Brotherhood's reemergence as a political force coincided with the proliferation of Islamic groups. Some of these groups espoused the violent overthrow of the government while others espoused living a devout life of rigorous observance of religious practices. It is impossible to list all the Islamic groups that emerged in the late 1970s because many of them had diffuse structures and some of the more militant groups were underground. Egypt's defeat and loss of territory in the June 1967 Six Day War was the main cause for the growth of religiously inspired political activism. Muslims tended to view the humiliating experience as the culmination of 150 years of foreign intrusion and an affront to their vision of a true Islamic community. Islamic tradition rejected the idea of non Muslims dominating Muslim society. Such a state of affairs discredited Muslim rulers who permitted it to persist. It was, therefore, incumbent on believers to end the domination and restore the true supremacy of Islam. As part of their Sunni creed, the most radical activists adopted jihad and committed themselves to battling unbelievers and impious Muslims. During the 1970s and 1980s, Islamists perpetrated a number of violent acts, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981.

as of 1989, the Islamists sought to make Egypt a community of the faithful based on their vision of an Islamic social order. They rejected conventional, secularist social analyses of Egypt's socioeconomic problems. They maintained, for example, that the causes of poverty were not overpopulation or high defense expenditures but the populace's spiritual failures—laxness, secularism, and corruption. The solution was a return to the simplicity, hard work, and self reliance of earlier Muslim life. The Islamists created their own alternative network of social and economic institutions through which members could work, study, and receive medical treatment in an Islamic environment. By the beginning of the 21st century, only the Gama'at Islamiya leaders who were in prison after the assassination of Sadat were released after several books they wrote and interviews showed that they revised their points of view and changed the radical tone of their speeches. However the census may be undercounting Christians. QScience Connect in 2013 using 2008 data estimated that 5.1% of Egyptians between the ages of 15 and 59 were Copts. The Pew Foundation estimates 5.1% for Christians in 2010. The CIA Fact Book estimates 10% (2012) while the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs states in 1997, "Estimates of the size of Egypt's Christian population vary from the low government figures of 6 to 7 million to the 12 million reported by some Christian leaders. The actual numbers may be in the 9 to 9.5 million range, out of an Egyptian population of more than 60 million" which yields an estimate of about 10–20% then. Several sources give 10–20%. The British Foreign Office gives a figure of 9%. The Christian Post in 2004 quotes the U. S. Copt Association as reporting 15% of the population as native Christian.