Religion and History in Somalia

Somalia is close to religiously uniform: nearly the entire population is Sunni Muslim, predominantly of the Shafi'i school, with a historically strong Sufi tradition expressed through tariqas such as the Qadiriyya and Ahmadiyya, whose saints' shrines and religious lodges once anchored local devotional life across the Horn of Africa. That devotional pattern, blending mainstream Sunni jurisprudence with Sufi veneration of saints, long defined religious practice among Somalis more than any rigid distinction between orthodox and mystical Islam.

The collapse of Somalia's central government in 1991 opened decades of clan-based civil conflict during which competing armed factions have contested state authority, in part through rival religious claims. The Islamist insurgency al-Shabaab in particular has pressed a stricter reading of sharia than the Sufi-inflected practice historically dominant among Somalis, and has waged violent campaigns against Sufi shrines and religious minorities as part of that project, turning a once largely uncontested religious identity into a site of ongoing armed conflict.