Roughly 10% of the Afghan population is Shia. Majority of Shias in Afghanistan belong to the Twelver branch. This includes the Hazara ethnic group and the smaller urbanized Qizilbash group, who are originally from eastern Iran.
The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist nationalist and pro-Pashtun movement founded in the early 1990s that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until October 2001.
Shia Muslims are a numerical majority in Iraq and Bahrain. Approximately 35% of the population in Yemen and half of the Muslims in Lebanon are Shia Muslims. There is also a very large population of Shia Muslims living in the Persian Gulf countries especially in Saudi Arabia.
Today's Afghanistan can be considered 99% Muslim. There is a rough 3/4 to 1/4 split in favor of Sunni Muslims to Shia. Though recent history has been defined by growing religious intolerance and sectarian conflict, Afghanistan does have marginal adherents of other religions.
Most Shiites live in the central parts of the country, as well as in the west and in cities like Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat and Ghazni.
Islam is the official state religion of Afghanistan, with approximately 99.7% of the Afghan population being Muslim. Roughly 90% practice Sunni Islam, while around 10% are Shias. Most Shias belong to the Twelver branch and only a smaller number follow Ismailism.
Shias comprise a majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, and a plurality in Lebanon, while Sunnis make up the majority of more than forty countries from Morocco to Indonesia.
Muslims comprise a number of sects: the majority practice Sunni Islam (estimated at 85–90%), while a minority practice Shia Islam (estimated at 10–15%). Most Pakistani Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, which is represented by the Barelvi and Deobandi traditions.
The Pashtuns are mainly Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, although there are some Shia Pashtuns in eastern Afghanistan. Most Pashtuns see their Sunni Islamic identity as something that distinguishes them from the Iranian Persians, who are Shia Muslims.
Their leader is Sayed Mansur Naderi and his son, Sayed Jaffar Naderi.
Iran has 66 million to 70 million Shias, or 37-40% of the world's total Shia population.
In a poll conducted by Sabancı University in 2006, 98.3% of Turks revealed they were Muslim. Most Muslims in Turkey are Sunni Muslims forming about 90%, and Shia-Aleviler (Alevis, Ja'faris and Alawites) denominations in total form up to 10% of the Muslim population.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Qatar is a Muslim nation, with laws, customs and practices rooted in Islam. The country is neither as liberal as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates nor as conservative as parts of Saudi Arabia. Most of its citizens are Sunni Muslim.
Between 85 and 90 percent of the approximately 21 million Saudi citizens are Sunni Muslims. Shia Muslims constitute 10 to 12 percent of the citizen population and an estimated 25 to 30 percent of the Eastern Province's population.
As many as 4,000 people are estimated to have been killed by Shia-Sunni sectarian attacks in Pakistan between 1987 and 2007. And since 2008, thousands of Shia have been killed by Sunni extremists according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Al-Qaeda is a Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization led by Salafi jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic state known as the Caliphate. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples.
While some Hazaras are Sunni, the majority identify as Shi'a. As both an ethnic and religious minority, Hazaras face intersectional discrimination.
The most important Shi'i area in Pakistan is the Punjab centred on Lahore. There are also large Shi'i communitiies in Sialkot and Khaipur. But after the partition of India a large number of Shi'is from Oudh moved to Karachi and this city now rivals Lahore as the centre of Shi'ism in Pakistan.
Pakistani Shi'a live throughout the country in urban centres, including Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Multan, Jhang and Sargodha. While Shi'a are not a majority in any of Pakistan's four provinces, they are a majority in the autonomous region of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Religion in Yemen consists primarily of two principal Islamic religious groups: 65% of the Muslim population is Sunni Muslim and around 35% is Zaydi Shia, according to the UNHCR. Shias are primarily Zaydi and there are also significant minorities of Twelver and Isma'ili Shias.
The Shia Jafari community estimates its members make up 4 percent of the population. Non-Muslim religious groups are mostly concentrated in Istanbul and other large cities, as well as in the southeast.
Shia Islam
The Lebanese Shia Muslims are around 27%–29% of the total population. Twelvers are the predominant Shia group, followed by Alawites and Ismailis. The Speaker of Parliament is always a Shi'a Muslim, as it is the only high post that Shi'as are eligible for.
The society has shunned the idea of a Shia marrying a Sunni (and vice versa) not because of the religious difference, but because of “what will we tell the society?” The matter has become less of a religious debate, but more of a societal symbol, which then leads to two individuals being punished for choosing each ...
While it's a common practice in Islamic and Western nations for the two to pray together, the practice is unheard of in the India subcontinent and completely out of the question in Lucknow.
India is also the country with the third-largest number of Muslims in the world. The majority of India's Muslims are Sunni, with significant Shia and Ahmadiyya minorities.