Countries
United Arab Emirates
Also Known As Emirati
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The United Arab Emirates makes Islam the official religion while hosting a resident population in which citizens are a small minority and South Asian, Arab, Filipino and Western expatriates predominate. Religious policy has consequently developed as a managed pluralism: churches, Hindu temples, Sikh gurdwaras and a Buddhist centre operate on land granted by the rulers, with the Shiva and Krishna temples of Bur Dubai dating to the mid twentieth century and the BAPS Hindu Mandir at Abu Mureikhah opening in 2024. Abu Dhabi hosted the signing of the Document on Human Fraternity by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al Azhar in 2019, and the Abrahamic Family House, a mosque, church and synagogue on one site, opened on Saadiyat Island in 2023. Proselytising among Muslims and criticism of Islam remain criminal offences.
Facts
Law and State
Establishment StatusIslam is the official religion, and Sharia informs personal status law. State Funding MechanismThe United Arab Emirates funds mosque staff through the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments (Awqaf), the federal body administering Sunni mosques outside Dubai, and pays imams and muezzins a state salary directly. On 18 March 2024 President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan directed a monthly allowance equal to fifty percent of basic salary for all mosque staff under the authority, automatically added to their pay as a gesture of appreciation for their role in maintaining the country's mosques. 4 Apostasy or Blasphemy LawThe United Arab Emirates criminalizes blasphemy under Federal Decree-Law No. 2 of 2015 on Combating Discrimination and Hatred, whose Article 4 prohibits offending the divine entity, offending, insulting or disrespecting any religion or its rituals or sacred things, distorting, destroying or desecrating holy books, insulting messengers or their families, and destroying places of worship or cemeteries, with penalties reaching several years' imprisonment and fines. A parallel cybercrime provision, most recently Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021, separately punishes using an information network to offend Islamic sanctities or insult a monotheistic religion with imprisonment and a fine of not less than 250,000 dirhams, and insults to the Divine Essence or the Prophet Muhammad specifically can draw up to seven years' imprisonment. The UAE has no codified apostasy statute, but sharia-derived personal status provisions can bear on a Muslim convert's marriage and inheritance standing. Prosecutions under the blasphemy and cybercrime provisions are documented as fairly common, per the US State Department's International Religious Freedom reporting, and fall disproportionately on the country's large expatriate population. 5 Registration or Recognition RegimeChurches, temples and gurdwaras operate on land granted by the country's rulers rather than through open licensing, the mechanism that let the 2023 Abrahamic Family House place a mosque, a church and a synagogue on one site. 3 Ban or Official WatchlistThe UAE cabinet designated Al-Islah, the Emirati affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization on November 15, 2014, as one of roughly eighty groups on a published list that also named Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Authorities have since prosecuted and jailed scores of Al-Islah members for forming what the state treats as an illegal branch of the Brotherhood, a charge the group itself denies while acknowledging it shares some of the Brotherhood's ideology. 3 Concordat BasisThe United Arab Emirates has no concordat with the Holy See. Article 7 of the 1971 Constitution, as revised through 2004, names Islam the official religion of the federation and Islamic Sharia a main source of legislation, the country's own constitutional relationship to religion, with worship for other faiths guaranteed by Article 32 within established custom and public order. 6 Geography
LatitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement. LongitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement. Status
Legal StatusIslam is the official religion and Sharia informs personal status law; churches, temples and gurdwaras operate on land granted by the rulers, and the 2023 Abrahamic Family House placed a mosque, church and synagogue on one site, while proselytising among Muslims remains a criminal offence. 3 Demographics
Religious CompositionAbout 76 per cent Muslim across the whole resident population, with Christians near 9 per cent and Hindus near 7 per cent; among citizens, who are a small minority of residents, Sunni Islam predominates (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1 Government
Government Typefederation of monarchies 2 Sovereignty StatusSovereign UN member state 2 Established Year2 December 1971 (from the UK) Location
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Religion and History in the United Arab Emirates
The territory of the Emirates was until the mid twentieth century a sparse coast of pearling ports and inland oases, and its religious history before oil is thin in the record but not absent: a Christian monastery excavated on Sir Bani Yas island dates to around the seventh century, evidence of the Nestorian church that stretched along the Gulf before Islam displaced it.
Islam arrived in the Prophet's lifetime, and the interior followed Maliki practice while the coast was shaped by trade with Persia and India. The transformation came after 1971, when the federation was formed and oil revenue converted a population of a few hundred thousand into one of nearly ten million, the great majority of them foreign workers. That inversion is the single most important fact about religion in the Emirates: the state is Muslim and Emirati, and most of the people in it are neither. Policy has responded by granting land for churches, temples and gurdwaras rather than by pretending the population is homogeneous, and by placing considerable emphasis on tolerance as an official value, with a dedicated ministerial portfolio and a Year of Tolerance in 2019. Emirati citizens themselves are overwhelmingly Sunni, with a Shia minority of perhaps a tenth concentrated in Dubai and Sharjah, and mosques are administered through the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments, which sets the Friday sermon nationally.
Granted Land, the Abrahamic Family House and Managed Pluralism
The Emirati model is pluralism by grant rather than by right. Congregations do not acquire land or build as of right; a ruler allocates a plot, and the community builds on it. The Shiva and Krishna temples in the Bur Dubai souk go back to the mid twentieth century and served the merchant community; the Guru Nanak Darbar gurdwara opened in Jebel Ali in 2012 and is among the largest in the region; the BAPS Hindu Mandir at Abu Mureikhah, built in traditional carved stone, opened in 2024 on land given by the ruler of Abu Dhabi.
The most deliberate statement is the Abrahamic Family House on Saadiyat Island, opened in 2023: a mosque, a church and a synagogue of identical cubic proportions on a shared podium, arising from the Document on Human Fraternity signed in Abu Dhabi in 2019 by Pope Francis and Ahmed el Tayeb, Grand Imam of al Azhar, on the first papal visit to the Arabian peninsula. Its synagogue is the first purpose built one in the region in generations, and it followed the Abraham Accords of 2020. The limits are equally clear.
Proselytising Muslims is a criminal offence, criticism of Islam falls under law on contempt of religion, conversion from Islam has no legal route, and Sharia governs personal status for Muslims. Recognition is extended to communities, not enforced as an individual right, and what is granted can in principle be withheld.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Expatriate communities worship at temples granted land by the rulers, including the Bur Dubai temples and the BAPS Mandir opened in 2024.
The official religion; Abu Dhabi hosted the 2019 Document on Human Fraternity and opened the Abrahamic Family House in 2023.
This source names United Arab Emirates directly: "The 1971 Constitution of the United Arab Emirates, as revised through 2004, in full English translation by the Constitute Project."
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