Islam in Pakistan
overview of Islam as practised in Pakistan
Islam is the largest and the state religion of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The country has over 231.69 million adherents of Islam, making it the world's second-largest country by Muslim population (only second to Indonesia). 85–90% of Pakistanis follow Sunni Islam (primarily the Hanafi school of jurisprudence), with 10–15% following Shia Islam.
About 97% of Pakistanis are Muslims. The majority are Sunni (85–90%) while Shias make up around 10-15%. Smaller minority Muslim populations in Pakistan include Quranists, nondenominational Muslims. There are also two Mahdi'ist based creeds practised in Pakistan, namely Mahdavia and Ahmadiyya, the latter of whom are considered by the constitution of Pakistan to be non-Muslims; they jointly constitute less than 1% of the population. Pakistan has the world's largest Muslim majority city (Karachi).
History
Before independence
Islam had reached the Indian subcontinent during the lifetime of Muhammad. According to a tradition, Baba Ratan Hindi was a trader from Punjab who was one of the non-Arab companions of Muhammad.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Islam in Pakistan” is overview of Islam as practised in Pakistan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Islam, Pakistan and overview, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3155362. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Islam in Pakistan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.