page_title: Demographics of Lebanon
section_title: 18 recognized religious groups
hierarchical_section_title: Demographics of Lebanon / Religious groups / The sectarian system / 18 recognized religious groups
caption_attribution_description: English: Created by the uploader.
context_page_description: About 99% of the population of Lebanon includes numerous Muslim sects and Christian denominations. Because the matter of religious balance is a sensitive political issue, a national census has not been conducted since 1932, before the founding of the modern Lebanese state. Consequently, there is an absence of accurate data on the relative percentages of the population of the major religions and groups. The absence of data and comprehensive statistics also concerns all other demographic studies unrelated to religious balance, due to the all but total inactivity of the concerned public agencies. The only recent statistics available are estimates based on studies made by private organizations. The biggest study made after the independence on the Lebanese Population was made by the Central Administration of Statistics under the direction of Robert Kasparian and Grégoire Haddad's Social Movement: "L'enquête par sondage sur la population active au Liban en 1970". It was conducted on a sample of 130,000 individuals.
  There are from 8.6 to 14 million Lebanese and descendants of Lebanese worldwide, mostly Christians.
context_section_description: The present Lebanese Constitution officially acknowledges 18 religious groups (see below). These have the right to handle family law according to their own courts and traditions, and they are the basic players in Lebanon's complex sectarian politics.
  Alawite
  Armenian Catholic
  Armenian Orthodox
  Assyrian Church of the East
  Chaldean Catholic
  Copts
  Druze
  Greek Orthodox
  Isma'ili
  Jewish
  Latin Catholic
  Maronite Catholic
  Melkite Greek Catholic
  Protestant
  Sunni
  Shia
  Syriac Catholic Church
  Syriac Orthodox Church
caption: An estimate of the area distribution of Lebanon's main religious groups
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