Nearly 40% of all Shia Muslims live in Iran [1, 2, 3].
Shia Muslims form a majority of the population in Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, as well as about half of the citizen population of Bahrain. Significant Shia communities are also found in Lebanon, Kuwait, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent.
Religion in Yemen primarily consists of two major Islamic branches. According to the CIA's World Factbook, approximately 65% of the population practices Sunni Islam, while around 35% adhere to Shia Islam. The vast majority of the Shia population are Zaydi, with minorities of Isma'ili Shias.
Large numbers of Shia Arab Muslims live in some Arab countries including Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the UAE, and Qatar. Shia Muslims are a numerical majority in Iraq. Approximately 35% of the population in Yemen and nearly half of the Muslims in Bahrain and Lebanon are Shia Muslims.
According to Iranian government estimates, Muslims constitute 99.4 percent of the population, of whom 90 to 95 percent are Shia, and 5 to 10 percent are Sunni.
The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (an acronym from the Arabic: حركة المقاومة الإسلامية, romanized: Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah), is a Sunni Islamist Palestinian nationalist political organisation with a military wing known as the al-Qassam Brigades.
The state religion in Qatar is Islam. Most Qataris belong to the Sunni sect of Islam. Shiites comprise around 10% of Qatar's Muslim population.
Palestinians are predominantly Sunni Muslims, with Sunni Islam being the faith of the vast majority (around 85-90%) of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, though there are also significant Palestinian Christian communities and very small Shia groups. The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, is a Sunni organization, but Shia groups like Hezbollah and Iran offer strong support for the Palestinian cause.
Iran - 90-95%
In Iran, Shia Muslims make up the majority, with 92.2% of all Muslim population in the country belonging to this sect. Initially, Iran was a Sunni majority until 1500 when Shah Ismail I conquered Iran and forced a conversion of Sunni Muslims to Shia Islam with several Sunnis murdered in the process.
The Pew survey estimated a Shia population of 300,000 Shias in North America, about 10.0% of North America's Muslim population.
Saddam Hussein Al-Majid Al-Tikriti was born on 28 April 1937, in al-Awja, a small village near Tikrit, to a Sunni Arab family from the Al-Bejat clan of the Bedouin Al-Bu Nasir tribe.
He is a Zaydi Shia Muslim. His father, Badreddin al-Houthi, was a religious scholar of Yemen's minority Zaydi sect. Abdul-Malik is the youngest among his eight brothers.
The pilgrimage to Mecca, known as hajj, is one of the pillars of Islam for both Sunnis and Shi'ites, but Shia have many other holy sites they make pilgrimages (ziyarat) to. Among them are Al-Baqi Cemetery near Medina, Najaf and Karbala, in Iraq, and Qom and Mashhad, in Iran.
Approximately 11 percent of the population are citizens, of whom more than 85 percent are Sunni Muslims, according to media reports. The vast majority of the remainder are Shia Muslims, who are concentrated in the Emirates of Dubai and Sharjah.
"Al Salam" literally means "The Peace"; the number "313" is the number men who accompanied the Islamic Prophet Muhammad during the Battle of Badr and is said by Shias to be the number of people that will accompany the 12th Shia Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, when he returns to the world during the end of times.
Most Muslims in Turkey are Sunni Muslims forming about 85–90%, and Shia-Aleviler (Alevis, Alawites, and Ja'faris) denominations in total form up to 10% of the Muslim population.
While the founder of all Islam is clearly Muhammad, the founder of Shia Islam is unquestionably his nephew and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib. Ali would become the founder, Caliph, and first Imam of the Shia Islamic sect.
The main responsibility of Sunni Caliphs was to maintain law and order in the Muslim realm as well as providing political and religious guidance. On the other hand, the Shia Imams, descendants of the Prophet, also held a God-given spiritual authority and were considered infallible.
The majority of Muslims in Israel are Sunni Arabs, with an Ahmadiyya minority. The Bedouin in Israel are also Arab Muslims, with some Bedouin clans participating in the Israeli army. The small Circassian community is composed of Sunni Muslims uprooted from the North Caucasus in the late 19th century.
In early times, Palestine was inhabited by Semitic peoples, the earliest being the Canaanites. According to tradition, Abraham, the common ancestor of the Jews and the Arabs, came from Ur to Canaan.
The Muslim population is overwhelmingly Sunni. An estimated one to three million Muslims are Shia.
This significant imbalance is largely due to the country's reliance on foreign labor, particularly in construction and other industries, where the workforce is predominantly male. Women make up only a small percentage of the population, as most migrant workers are men who come to Qatar for employment opportunities.
🩳 yes, you can wear shorts in Qatar, especially at the pool, beach, or in expat-heavy spots. 🧕🏼 no, you don't need to wear a hijab (unless you're entering a mosque)
The law allows importation of religious holy books, such as Bibles.