Religion in Egypt

Religion in Egypt controls many aspects of social life and is endorsed by law. The state religion of Egypt is Islam, although estimates vary greatly in the absence of official statistics. Since the 2006 census, religion has been excluded, and thus available statistics are estimates made by religious and non-governmental agencies. The country is majority Sunni Muslim (estimated to be 85–95% of the population), with the next largest religious group being Coptic Orthodox Christians (with estimates ranging from 5 to 15%). The exact numbers are subject to controversy, with Christians alleging that they have been systemically under-counted in existing censuses.

The history of religion in Egypt stretches over thousands of years, from ancient polytheism to Christianity and then Islam. Despite the customary division of Egyptian history into discrete eras, Ancient Egypt, Greco-Roman, and Islamic Egypt, strong threads of continuity run through Egypt's religious and cultural life. Many customs and beliefs practiced today, such as funerary laments, rural food traditions, and ideas about the afterlife, can be traced to ancient Egyptian origins, and having survived inside later religious identities. Even when new religions supplanted older ones, Egyptians frequently reinterpreted them through inherited cultural lenses, ensuring that the essence of their civilizational identity remained intact beneath outward transformations.

Egypt hosts two major religious institutions. Al-Azhar, founded in 970 CE by the Fatimids as the first Islamic university in Egypt and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria established in the middle of the 1st century by Saint Mark.