About two-thirds of the people living in Qatar are Muslim, and Islam is the state religion. A 2022 factsheet by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) put the population at 65.2% Muslim, 15.9% Hindu, 13.7% Christian and 3.8% Buddhist, with small Jewish and Baháʼí communities; other estimates differ by a few points, and one for 2020 gives 75.9% Muslim. The 2004 constitution declares Islam the official religion and sharia a principal source of legislation, while guaranteeing freedom of worship within the bounds of public order and morality. Qatari citizens, only 11.6% of a population counted at 2,846,118 in the 2020 census, are overwhelmingly Muslim and mostly Sunni, with a Shia minority; nearly every Hindu, Christian and Buddhist in the country is a foreign worker or expatriate. The state registers Sunni and Shia Islam and eight Christian denominations, and proselytising for any faith other than Islam is prohibited.
Sunni Islam: Qatar's State Religion Since the 2004 Constitution
Islam reached the peninsula in the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime. In 628 he sent his envoy al-Ala al-Hadrami to Munzir ibn Sawa, ruler of the region then called Bahrain, which stretched from the coast of Kuwait to the south of Qatar; Munzir converted, as did many of his subjects. During the Second Fitna, the Khariji commander Qatari ibn al-Fuja'a, born at Al Khuwayr in Qatar, led the Azariqa sect in many battles and minted the first known Kharijite coins, the earliest dated 688 or 689. In later centuries the peninsula served as rangeland for nomadic tribes from Najd and al-Hasa, and it was contested between the Wahhabis of Najd and the Al Khalifa. Today most citizens follow the Salafi movement, often called Wahhabism, in its Hanbali form, making Qatar one of two Hanbali-majority states alongside Saudi Arabia. There is also a large Shafi'i following, including the scholar Ali al-Qaradaghi, while most South Asian Muslims follow the Hanafi school.
The Constitution of Qatar, approved by almost 97% of voters and in force since 9 April 2004, sets out the state's position in its first article: Islam is the official religion, sharia a principal source of law, and Arabic the official language. An heir apparent must be a Muslim born to a Qatari Muslim mother. The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs sets religious policy, and Islamic studies is compulsory for Muslim pupils in state schools. The law punishes blasphemy against Islam, Christianity or Judaism.
The country had 1,848 mosques at the end of 2013 and more than 2,000 by 2024. The national mosque is the Qatar State Mosque in the Lejbailat district of Doha, opened in 2011 under Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and renamed after Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century founder of the Wahhabi movement. Its main hall holds 11,000 men, a separate enclosure takes 1,200 women, and the whole site can hold 30,000 worshippers under 28 large domes over the hall and 65 more around the outer quadrangle. Designed by the Qatari architect Ibrahim Jaidah, it draws on traditional Qatari building styles. Its name has itself been contested: in 2017 some 200 descendants of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab signed a request in the Saudi newspaper Okaz asking for it to be changed.
Islamic studies are taught at Qatar University and at the Faculty of Islamic Studies of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Education City, where the Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics was founded in 2012. In central Doha, the Abdulla Bin Zaid Al Mahmoud Islamic Cultural Center beside Souq Waqif teaches Arabic to newcomers, and the Fanar cultural centre publishes religious studies and runs courses on Arabic and Islam.
Shia Muslims: Between 5% and 15% of Qatar's Muslims
Estimates of the Shia share of Qatar's Muslims range from about 5% to 15%. Shia Islam is one of the two registered Muslim communities, and several of Qatar's best-known merchant families have historically been Shia. Unlike in neighbouring Bahrain, Qatari Shias share the same dress, dialect and customs as Sunni Qataris, and some have held government posts. Tensions have been rare but not absent: in 2011 a group of extremists tried to demolish a Shia cemetery near Doha, and Emir Hamad bin Khalifa condemned the attempt and attended a Shia funeral as a public gesture of respect.
Hindus: The Second-Largest Faith in Qatar
Hindus are the second-largest religious group, at about 15.9% of the population in the 2022 USCIRF figures, or an estimated 422,118 people. Almost all come from South Asia: India is the largest source of migrant workers, with Indians of all faiths estimated at around 700,000, and Nepal also sends many; one report recorded 176,748 Nepali citizens working in Qatar over 2011–2014. Hindi-Urdu and Malayalam are among the most widely spoken languages in the migrant workforce.
Despite its size, the Hindu community has no authorised place of worship. Unlike Bahrain, the UAE and Oman, Qatar has no Hindu temple, and religious-freedom monitors note that Hindus, along with Buddhists and Baháʼís, still lack recognised premises, which leaves worship to private homes and gatherings.
Christians and the Mesaimeer Religious Complex
Christianity in Qatar is older than Islam. Mesopotamian Christians spread the faith east from 224 AD, and by the 5th century the region known in Syriac as Beth Qatraye, "the region of the Qataris", was a centre of the Church of the East, with monasteries on the peninsula. Isaac of Nineveh, a 7th-century bishop and saint, was born there, and other Syriac writers of the period, including Dadisho Qatraya and Gabriel of Qatar, came from the peninsula. The bishops of Beth Qatraye stopped attending church synods in 674, although Christian practice persisted in the region until the late 9th century.
Today's Christians, about 13.7% of the population in 2022, are expatriates from the Philippines, India, Europe, Africa, the Arab world and the Americas. Public Christian worship was banned until September 1988, when the government lifted the prohibition after negotiations between Emir Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani and the US ambassador, Joseph Ghougassian. Until the churches were built, Catholics and other Christians met informally in homes. In May 2005 church representatives signed a 50-year lease on land at Mesaimeer, on the outskirts of Doha, and the Religious Complex grew there; the foundation stone of the Catholic church was laid in December 2005. A board of all the churches deals directly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and each church may apply for visas for visiting clergy. The Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, the first Catholic church in Qatar, was dedicated on 14 March 2008; it cost $15 million and holds Masses in nine languages, with most services held on Fridays. Qatar had about 350,000 Catholics in 2023, under the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia.
The Anglican Church of the Epiphany opened on 21 September 2013 with room for 650 worshippers; its Anglican Centre houses 59 Evangelical, Pentecostal and Protestant congregations. The Greek Orthodox Church of St Isaac and St George serves about 10,000 Orthodox Christians, and the Coptic Church of St Paul and St Peter serves the substantial Coptic community. Indian churches such as the Mar Thoma and Malankara Orthodox Syrian congregations are also active. Eight denominations are registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; any congregation of fewer than 1,500 members must worship under one of them. Like all non-Muslim groups, they may not seek converts.
Buddhists From South, Southeast and East Asia
Buddhists made up between 1.8% and 3.8% of the population in 2020, roughly 100,000 people, according to 2020 estimates. They are mainly migrant workers from South, Southeast and East Asia. Like Hindus, they have no registered temple and practise privately.
The Baháʼí Community Since the 1940s
The Baháʼí Faith has been present in Qatar since the 1940s, before the modern state was established. USCIRF estimates the community at 200 to 300 people of more than 30 nationalities, run by a National Spiritual Assembly. It has sought legal recognition for about 80 years without success. UN Special Rapporteurs and Human Rights Watch have documented deportations and refusals to renew residency permits since the early 2000s, and in July 2025 UN experts described a "continuous pattern" of discrimination. The Assembly's chair, Remy Rowhani, was sentenced to five years in prison in August 2025 and acquitted on appeal that October. In April 2026 the Baháʼí International Community reported that more than 40% of the remaining Baháʼís in Qatar faced expulsion through the non-renewal of work permits.
Judaism and the 2022 FIFA World Cup
The history of Jews in Qatar is limited, but a small expatriate community lives mainly in Doha, served by Rabbi Eliyahu Chitrik. Interfaith contact has grown since the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue began holding annual conferences in 2003; a Jewish delegation from Israel first attended in 2005. In 2013 Qatari flights carried a group of Yemenite Jews from Doha to Israel, and during the 2022 FIFA World Cup more than 10,000 Israelis visited and kosher meals were provided; Qatari officials had consulted the American rabbi Marc Schneier as early as 2019 on how to welcome Jewish visitors. International monitors have noted the contrast between this public interfaith engagement and the unresolved status of smaller communities. Freedom House scored Qatar 2 out of 4 for religious freedom in 2023.
Because nearly nine in ten residents are foreign, Qatar's religious map is really a map of its workforce, and it changes as migration does; our page on the population of Qatar tracks those numbers, while the mosques and churches described here sit across Doha, Qatar's capital, home to about 92% of the country's people in 2017.