Category: Shia Muslims in the World

In many articles Shias and Alevis are considered to be different sects while in some other the latter is known as a blanket term for a large number of different Shia communities, whose actual beliefs and ritual practices differ. Since the biggest Shia population in Turkey belongs to this group, a separate blog post is […]

Iraq’s ethnic and religious diversity Iraq’s population is predominantly Muslim. This population consists of nearly two thirds of Shia population in Iraq and the other third is mainly Sunni. This means that Iraq is one of the few countries in which Shia Muslims are a majority. One of the main features of this country is […]

Shia communities have always been seen as a minority which means that an overwhelming majority of Muslims are Sunnis and the Shia population statistics in the world prove that they generate about 10-13% percent of Muslims. It is estimated that there are between 154 million and 200 million Shia Muslims in the world today. Shia […]

Reaching independence in Azerbaijan was followed immediately by the debates on concepts of liberalism, nationalism, secularism and religion. Prominent among these concepts are terms such as secularism and nationalism, which characterize Azerbaijani society. Nearly every politician frequently uses the term “liberal values” or “the establishment of a democratic regime”, but most of them are nationalists […]

To know more about the history of Shiism in Azerbaijan we need to know some basic facts about Shiism itself. As we know, Shia Islam has several branches, like Zaydiyya (Fiver Shia Islam), Ismaili (Sevener Shia Islam), Isna Ashari (Twelver), Alawits etc. Most Azerbaijani Muslims belong to Twelver Shia Islam, based on Jafari Madhab, the […]

The Turkish Shia communities in Germany differentiate themselves according to their roots in east Anatolian Twelver Shiism (“Caferi”; mostly refugees from Russian Azerbaijan, who came to the district of Iğdır after 1918) or as converts from Turkish Sunnism after the “Islamic Revolution” in Iran. Conversion from Sunni Islam to Shiism is in fact quite an […]

The ethnographic setting of the Shias in Germany is still characterized by the results of several waves of migration since the 1960s: Iranians, Turkish labor migrants, and Lebanese, Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani refugees maintain their ethnic identity partly by means of religion and ritual activity. However, there are some German converts, as well as Turkish […]

Up to now there are three Muslim communities in Austria: (a) Islamic Faith Community (Islamische Glaubengemeinschaft in Österreich (IGGiÖ) which comprises of Sunnis and Iranian Shias), (b) Alevi Faith Community (Alewitische Glaubengemeinschaft in Österreich), (c) Shia Denomination Community (Schitische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, which comprises of Iraq Shias). Nowadays the ‘Islamic Faith Community in Austria’ (Islamische Glaubengemeinschaft in […]

The Shia Muslim population in Pakistan is estimated to be between five and 20 per cent which is not considerable given that over 95 per cent of Pakistan’s population are Muslims . The majority of Pakistan’s Shia population adhere to the Twelver (ithna’ashari) school of thought; other items of the Shia sects’ list present in […]

Not having a large population of Shias, Algeria cannot be seen in the Shia countries’ list. The Shia community in Algeria is very small. Ben-Khalifa (2018) claims that Anouar Malek (who is an Algerian journalist) stated that Shia Muslims in Algeria are around 7000 individuals which is less than 0.02% of the whole population. However, […]