Eritrea is a nation in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti and by the Red Sea. In Eritrea, the religious majority are Orthodox Christian, while the second largest religious population is Muslim. According to official 2002 census figures, the religious composition of Eritrea was as follows: about 64% Christian (58% Orthodox, 5% Roman Catholic, and less than 1% Protestant), 36% Muslim, and less than 1% traditional believer or ethnoreligionist. While the greater proportion of the country is Christian, with an estimated population of more than 3 million (3,250,849) in 2009, the Muslim population is almost 2 million (1,854,000).

Christians and Muslims are not evenly distributed geographically around the country. Christians are the majority in only two of the six administrative regions in ...