Religion and History in the Gambia

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Gambia is one of the most densely Muslim countries in West Africa, close to 96 per cent Sunni with a small Ahmadi community, set against a Christian minority of roughly four per cent who are mostly Roman Catholic. The two communities share family ties across religious lines closely enough that intermarriage and mixed households are unremarkable, a closeness that has helped keep interfaith relations comparatively calm in a country whose religious demographics might otherwise suggest more friction than exists in practice.

The Supreme Islamic Council and the Gambia Christian Council maintain a standing interfaith relationship that both government officials and outside diplomats have leaned on directly to defuse local tensions, most visibly during a period of friction between Muslim and Christian residents in the Bakau and Tallinding areas. That institutionalized cooperation between the country's two main religious bodies gives the Gambia a model of interfaith coordination that goes beyond the ordinary constitutional guarantee of religious freedom into active, standing dialogue.