What is the religious makeup of Syria?
According to CIA World Factbook, 87% of Syrians are Muslim, the majority being Sunni Muslims (74%). A further 13% are Shi’a Muslims, following the Alawite (11%), Ismaili (1%) or Twelver Imami (0.5%) sects.
Is Syria majority Sunni or Shia?
Although Syria has no official religion, 85 percent of the population is Muslim, and of these, 85 percent are members of the Sunni sect (i.e. 72 percent of the total population).
What percentage of Syria is orthodox?
35.71%
Demographics
| Christianity in Syria (1956) | |
|---|---|
| Christianity denomination | percent |
| Greek Orthodox | 35.71% |
| Armenian Orthodox | 22.40% |
| Greek Catholics | 11.81% |
Does Syria follow Sharia?
Although Syria considers itself a secular state and makes no constitutional provisions for the supremacy of Islam or the Sharia, the opposite is the case for its legal system of family law.
Are there still Christians in Syria?
Christians are believed to have constituted about 30% of the Syrian population as recently as the 1920s. Today, they make up about 10% of Syria’s 22 million people.
Are there Catholic Syrians?
The Catholic Church in Syria is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. There are 368,000 Catholics in Syria (and its refugee diaspora), approximately 2% of the total population.
Why are there so many Christians in Syria?
The city of Aleppo is believed to have the largest number of Christians in Syria. In the late Ottoman rule, a large percentage of Syrian Christians emigrated from Syria, especially after the bloody chain of events that targeted Christians in particular in 1840, the 1860 massacre, and the Assyrian genocide.
What was the religion of Syria before Islam?
The name “Syria” is derived from the Assyrian and Syriac Christian denominations, which constituted eighty percent of the country’s population before Islam arrived in the seventh century.
Why is Syria important to Christianity?
Syria’s Christian community is one of the oldest in the world, going back two millennia. The apostle Paul is said to have been converted on the road to Damascus, while some Christians from the town of Maaloula can still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Is Christianity growing in Syria?
KOBANI, Syria (Reuters) – A community of Syrians who converted to Christianity from Islam is growing in Kobani, a town besieged by Islamic State for months, and where the tide turned against the militants four years ago.