Somalia: Islam is Official Religion, Conversion is Banned

[The Straight Story]

Somalia: Islam is Official Religion, Conversion is Banned

Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)

September 21, 2006
Posted to the web September 21, 2006

Somalia is officially an Islamic state and conversion is prohibited.

The country has a population of approximately 8.3 million, nearly all of them Sunni Muslims. There is a small, extremely low-profile Christian community.

According to the International Religious Freedom Report 2006 issued by the US State Department last Friday, proselytizing for any religion except Islam is prohibited in Puntland and Somaliland and effectively blocked by informal social consensus elsewhere in the country.

Somalia has had no government since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991. The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which grew out of individual courts' efforts to establish a degree of order in Mogadishu, took control of the Somali capital on June 4, following a military confrontation with a loose coalition of Somali warlords.

A Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was created in October 2004 following the Somalia National Reconciliation Conference in Kenya. That government formally established temporary operations in Baidoa in February 2006. The TFG adopted a Transitional Federal Charter which establishes Islam as the national religion.

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