Religion in Tanzania - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Current statistics on religion in Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

are unavailable because religious surveys were eliminated from government census reports after 1967. Religious leaders and sociologists estimate that the Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

and Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

communities are approximately equal in size, each accounting for 30 to 40 percent of the population, with the remainder consisting of practitioners of other faiths, indigenous religions, and people of no religion.

The study of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs at the United States Department of State is one of three bureaus and two offices that constitute the Office of the Under Secretary for Global Affairs...

for 2009 suggests that 62% of the population of Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

is Christian

Christian

, 35% is Muslim

Muslim

, and 3% are members of other religious groups.
The CIA World Factbook however states that 30% of the population is Christian with Muslim being 35% and indigenous beliefs 35%.

97 percent of the population on the Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...

archipelago is Muslim. On the mainland, Muslim communities are concentrated in coastal areas, with some large Muslim minorities also in inland urban areas. Between 80 and 90 percent of the country's Muslim population is Sunni; the remainder consists of several Shi'a subgroups, mostly of Asian descent. The Christian population is composed of Roman Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals, New Apostolic Christians

New Apostolic Church

The New Apostolic Church is a chiliastic church, converted to Protestantism as a free church from the Catholic Apostolic Church. The church has existed since 1879 in Germany and since 1897 in the Netherlands...

, Seventh-day Adventists, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), and members of Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...

. The Baha'i Faith

Bahá'í Faith

The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....

is established in several hundred localities throughout the country. Foreign missionaries operate in the country.

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion

Freedom of religion

Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

, and the Government generally respects this right in practice. There have been cases of increased tension between secular and fundamentalist Muslims as the latter have called for Muslims to adopt a stricter interpretation of Islam in their daily lives.

See also