Lebanon has one of the Middle East's most religiously diverse populations, with no official census since 1932 for fear of upsetting its delicate sectarian balance, though estimates commonly place the population at roughly 60 to 65 percent Muslim, divided closely between Sunni and Shia, and around 30 to 35 percent Christian, chiefly Maronite Catholic alongside Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and smaller denominations, with a small Druze minority. Mount Lebanon served historically as a refuge for religious minorities fleeing persecution elsewhere, allowing the Maronite Church, in communion with Rome since at least the twelfth-century Crusader period while retaining its own Syriac liturgical heritage, and the Druze, an esoteric offshoot of Ismaili Islam, to establish durable mountain strongholds under Ottoman-era autonomy.
Beirut and the coastal cities held significant Sunni Muslim populations tied to broader Mediterranean and Levantine trade networks, while Shia Muslim communities concentrated historically in the south and the Bekaa Valley. French colonial administration after the First World War, exercising a mandate that favored Christian, particularly Maronite, political interests, shaped the modern state's 1943 National Pact power-sharing formula at independence.