The confessional picture of the world and of Uzbekistan

Data on the religious composition of the world’s population differ according to source, year and method of counting; the table in the textbook gives older estimates from the 2010s, so it should be compared with newer sources. According to Pew Research Center estimates for 2020, Christians number about 2.3 billion, Muslims about 2 billion, Hindus about 1.2 billion, and people with no religion or no stated affiliation about a quarter of the population; these figures are approximate. According to the textbook, 16 confessions operated in Uzbekistan as of December 2017: Islam (Muslim Board of Uzbekistan), Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Lutheranism, the Armenian Apostolic Church, a number of Protestant communities, Judaism, the Baha’i faith, the Society for Krishna Consciousness and Buddhism. The “Bible Society of Uzbekistan” is a religious organisation but does not have the status of a separate confession. It is said that in the years of independence Orthodox churches in Tashkent, Samarkand and Navoi, a Catholic church and a Buddhist temple in Tashkent were rebuilt or renovated; the list and the number of organisations are updated, and official information should be taken from the Committee on Religious Affairs. The historical roots of the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan lie in the Congress held in Tashkent on 20 October 1943 and the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM); its first head was Mufti Ishan Babakhan (1856–1957). The textbook says the Board was formed in December 1995, that it includes mosques, secondary Islamic schools, the Tashkent Islamic Institute, the “Waqf” charitable foundation and a publishing house, that by the Presidential Decree of 16 April 2018 it became one of the founders of the International Islamic Academy, and that the mufti is elected for five years at a meeting of the Council of Ulama.