Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global popula ...

is the most widely professed religion in Tanzania, with a substantial

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

minority. Smaller populations of Animists, practitioners of other faiths, and religiously unaffiliated people are also present. Current statistics on the relative sizes of various religions in

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

are limited because religious questions have been eliminated from government census reports since 1967. A 2020 estimate by Pew Research Center revealed that 63.1% of the population is Christian, 34.1% Muslim, 1.2% practices traditional religions and 1.5% is unaffiliated. However, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), 55.3% of the population is

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...

, 31.5% is

, 11.3% practices traditional faiths, while 1.9% of the population is non-religious or adheres to other faiths as of 2020. According to a 2015 study, 27.7% of the population was

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

and 25.6% was

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. According to a Pew Research Center study conducted in 2012, 40% of the Muslim population of Tanzania identifies as

Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a dis ...

, 20% as

Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, mos ...

, and 15% as

Ahmadiyya Ahmadiyya (, ), officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ, ar, الجماعة الإسلامية الأحمدية, al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmīyah al-Aḥmadīyah; ur, , translit=Jamā'at Aḥmadiyyah Musl ...

, besides a smaller subset of Ibadism practitioners as well as non-denominational Muslims. The ARDA estimates that most Tanzanian Muslims are Sunni, with a small Shia minority, as of 2020.

Statistics

For many years estimates have been repeated that about a third of the population each follows Islam, Christianity and traditional religions. Religion-related statistics for Tanzania have been regarded as notoriously biased and unreliable. About 99 percent of the population in

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islan ...

is Muslim. The largest religion in

Dar es Salaam Dar es Salaam (; from ar, دَار السَّلَام, Dâr es-Selâm, lit=Abode of Peace) or commonly known as Dar, is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over s ...

is Islam, comprising around 70% of its total population. There are also active communities of other religious groups, primarily on the mainland, such as Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and Bahá'ís.

Abrahamic

Christianity

The Christian population is largely composed of Roman Catholics and Protestants. Among the latter, the large number of

Lutherans Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...

and

Moravians Moravians ( cs, Moravané or colloquially , outdated ) are a West Slavic ethnographic group from the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, who speak the Moravian dialects of Czech or Common Czech or a mixed form of both. Along with the Si ...

point to the German past of the country while the number of Anglicans point to the British history of Tanganyika. All of them have had some influence in varying degrees from the Walokole movement (East African Revival), which has also been fertile ground for the spread of charismatic and Pentecostal groups.

Islam

On the mainland, Muslim communities are concentrated in coastal areas, with some large Muslim majorities also in inland urban areas especially and along the former caravan routes. 40% of the country's Muslim population is

; the remainder consists of several

subgroups (20%), mostly of Indian descent and the

(15%),International Religious Freedom Report 2007: Tanzania
United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (September 14, 2007). ''This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired ...

.'' and a smaller subset of Ibadism and

nondenominational Muslim Non-denominational Muslims () are Muslims who do not belong to, do not self-identify with, or cannot be readily classified under one of the identifiable Islamic schools and branches. Non-denominational Muslims are found primarily in Central As ...

practitioners.Wortmann, Kimberly T. Omani Religious Networks in Contemporary Tanzania and Beyond. Diss. 2018.

Bahá'í Faith

Judaism

Indian religions

Buddhism

Hinduism

Hinduism is a minority religion in Tanzania.

Sikhism

Freedom of religion

The government of Tanzania and the semiautonomous government of

both recognize religious freedom as a principle and make efforts to protect it. The government of Zanzibar appoints

religious officials in Zanzibar. The main body of law in Tanzania and Zanzibar is

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

, but Muslims have the option to use religious courts for family-related cases. Individual cases of religiously motivated violence have occurred against both

Christians Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρ� ...

and Muslims, as well as those accused of

witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have ...

.
International Religious Freedom Report 2017 Tanzania
', US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The freedom to practice religion is a human right in Tanzania.

Notable places of worship

* Azania Front Lutheran Church – Lutheran *

Christ Church, Zanzibar Christ Church is an Anglican cathedral in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania. It belongs to the Anglican Church of Tanzania. It is a landmark historical church, as well as one of the most prominent examples of early Christian architecture in East Afric ...

– Anglican *

Gaddafi Mosque Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi is the largest mosque in Tanzania and the second largest in East Africa after the Uganda National Mosque in Uganda. It is located in the Tanzanian capital of Dodoma. It was named after the former Libyan Brotherly Lead ...

– Islamic *

Great Mosque of Kilwa The Great Mosque of Kilwa is a congregational mosque on the island of Kilwa Kisiwani, in Kilwa Masoko in Kilwa District in Lindi Region of Tanzania. It was likely founded in the tenth century, but the two major stages of construction date to t ...

– Islamic (Historical) * Ijumaa Mosque – Islamic *

Kizimkazi Mosque The Kizimkazi Dimbani Mosque (''Misikiti wa kale wa Kizimkazi Dimbani'' in Swahili) is a mosque Located in the town of Dimbani, Kusini District of Unguja South Region in Tanzania. It is situated on the southern tip of the island of Zanzibar in ...

– Islamic * St. Joseph's Cathedral, Dar es Salaam – Catholic

References

{{Africa religion