Islam

The most widely professed religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina is Islam and the second biggest religion is Christianity. Nearly all the Muslims of Bosnia are followers of the Sunni denomination of Islam; the majority of Sunnis follow the Hanafi legal school of thought (fiqh) and Maturidi theological school of thought (kalām). Bosniaks are generally associated with Islam, Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Catholic Church, and Bosnian Serbs with the Serbian Orthodox Church. The State Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the entity Constitutions of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska provide for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in ethnically integrated areas or in areas where government officials are of the majority religion; the state-level Law on Religious Freedom also provides comprehensive rights to religious communities. However, local authorities sometimes restricted the right to worship of adherents of religious groups in areas where such persons are in the minority.

Government protection of religious freedom declined, especially during the campaign period prior to the October 2006 national elections, due to selective legal enforcement and the indifference of some government officials. At the end of the period covered by this report, the Government was implementing the State Law on Religious Freedom to protect the rights of religious communities and create a government registry allowing them to establish legal status.

Christianity in Kazakhstan is the second most practiced religion after Islam and one of the major religions of Kazakhstan.

Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital city; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, while Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim is widely recognised internationally.

Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period (14th century BCE) Jerusalem was named as Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 10th century BCE (Iron Age II), and by the 9th century BCE the city had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538 the city walls were rebuilt for a last time around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today those walls define the Old City, which since the 19th century has been divided into four quarters—the Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Since 1860 Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In 2023 Jerusalem had a population of 1,028,366. In 2022 60% were Jews and almost 40% were Palestinians. In 2020 the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100 (59.9%), Muslims 353,800 (37.2%), Christians 16,300 (1.7%) and 10,800 unclassified (1.1%).

The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally written in Hebrew (with some parts in Aramaic) and Koine Greek. The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies.

The religious texts, or scriptures, were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah ('Teaching') in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning 'five books') in Greek. The second-oldest part was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im). The third collection, the Ketuvim, contains psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories. Tanakh (Hebrew: תָּנָ״ךְ‎, romanized: Tanaḵ) is an alternate term for the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic Text is the medieval version of the Tanakh—written in Hebrew and Aramaic—that is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible by modern Rabbinic Judaism. The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of the Tanakh from the third and second centuries BCE; it largely overlaps with the Hebrew Bible.

The Quran (vocalized Arabic: الْقُرْآن‎, Quranic Arabic: الۡقُرۡءَان‎, al-Qurʾān [alqurˈʔaːn], lit. 'the recitation' or 'the lecture'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God (Allāh). It is organized in 114 chapters (surah, pl. suwar) which consist of individual verses (āyah). Besides its religious significance, it is widely regarded as the finest work in Arabic literature, and has significantly influenced the Arabic language. It is the object of a modern field of academic research known as Quranic studies.

Muslims believe the Quran was orally revealed by God to the final Islamic prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel incrementally over a period of some 23 years, beginning on the Laylat al-Qadr, when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632, the year of his death. Muslims regard the Quran as Muhammad's most important miracle, a proof of his prophethood, and the culmination of a series of divine messages starting with those revealed to the first Islamic prophet Adam, including the holy books of the Torah, Psalms, and Gospel in Islam.

The Abrahamic religions are a set of monotheistic religions that respect or admire the religious figure Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, though the term also often encompasses several smaller faiths. The religions of this set share doctrinal, historical, and geographic overlap that contrasts them with Indian religions, Iranian religions, and East Asian religions. The term, introduced in the 20th century, replaced "Judeo-Christian" to include Islam as an Abrahamic religion and acknowledge differences between Judaism and Christianity. However, it has been criticized for oversimplifying cultural and doctrinal nuances.

Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest. By land area Mauritania is the 11th-largest country in Africa and the 28th-largest in the world; 90% of its territory is in the Sahara desert. Most of its population of some 4.3 million live in the temperate south of the country; roughly a third of the population is concentrated in the capital and largest city, Nouakchott, on the Atlantic coast.

The country's name derives from Mauretania, the Latin name for a region in the ancient Maghreb. It extended from central present-day Algeria to the Atlantic. Berbers occupied what is now Mauritania by the beginning of the 3rd century AD. Groups of Arab tribes migrated to this area in the late 7th century, bringing with them Islam, Arab culture, and the Arabic language. In the early 20th century, Mauritania was colonized by France as part of French West Africa. It achieved independence in 1960. However, the country has since experienced recurrent coups and periods of military dictatorship. The 2008 Mauritanian coup d'état was led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who won subsequent presidential elections in 2009 and 2014. He was succeeded by General Mohamed Ould Ghazouani following the 2019 elections, in what was considered the country's first peaceful transition of power since independence. Mauritania has a poor human rights record, particularly because of its perpetuation of slavery; the 2018 Global Slavery Index estimates there are about 90,000 slaves in the country (or 2.1% of the population).

Adherents of Islam constitute the world's second largest and fastest growing major religious grouping, maintaining suggested 2017 projections in 2022. As of 2020, Pew Research Center (PEW) projections suggest there are a total of 2 billion adherents worldwide. Further studies indicate that the global spread and percentage growth of Islam is primarily due to relatively high birth rates and a youthful age structure. Conversion to Islam has no impact on the overall growth of the Muslim population, as the number of people converting to Islam is roughly equal to the number of those leaving the faith.

Most Muslims fall under either of three main branches:

Islamabad (/ɪzˈlɑːməbæd/ ; Urdu: اسلام‌آباد, romanised: Islāmābād, lit. 'City of Islam', [ɪsˈlɑːmɑːbɑːd] ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's tenth-most populous city with a population of over 1.1 million, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital Territory. Built as a planned city in the 1960s and established in 1967, it replaced Karachi as Pakistan's national capital. Islamabad is located north of the city of Rawalpindi, with which it forms a metropolitan area of over 5.7 million inhabitants.

The Greek architect Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis developed Islamabad's master plan, in which he divided it into eight zones; the city comprises administrative, diplomatic enclave, residential areas, educational and industrial sectors, commercial areas, as well as rural and green areas administered by the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation with support from the Capital Development Authority. Islamabad is known for its parks and forests, including the Margalla Hills National Park and the Shakarparian. It is home to several landmarks, including the country's flagship Faisal Mosque. Other prominent landmarks include the Pakistan Monument and Democracy Square.