Afghanistan
Religion.
About 99 percent of the people of Afghanistan are
Muslims, of whom some
three-fourths are members of the Sunnite sect (Hanafi
branch). The others, particularly the Hazaras,
Kizilbash, and a few Isma'ilis, follow
Shi'ite Islam. The Nuristanis are
descendants of a large ethnic group, the Kafirs, who were forcibly
converted to Islam in 1895; the name of their region
was then changed from Kafiristan ("Land of the Infidels") to
Nuristan ("Land of Light"). There are also a few
thousand Hindus and Sikhs.
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