This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Djibouti is a nearly uniformly Sunni Muslim country, around 94 per cent of the population, at the mouth of the Red Sea where Somali and Afar communities share a common Islamic identity that predates the modern state by centuries. A small Christian minority, mostly Ethiopian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant, along with tiny Shia Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Baha'i communities, make up the rest, and the constitution names Islam the religion of the state outright while still guaranteeing equality before the law for people of every faith, a combination that sets Djibouti apart from neighboring Somalia and Ethiopia, whose constitutions declare no state religion at all.
Djibouti's strategic position on the Bab el Mandeb strait has made it host to foreign military bases from several nations, and the government has treated religious registration partly as a security screen against the instability that has spread through the wider Horn of Africa. Imams at major mosques are civil service employees whose salaries the government pays directly, and the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Waqfs owns mosque properties and other Islamic assets outright, a degree of state administration of Islam unusual even among Muslim-majority states.