Religion in Eritrea

[4] Among other things, the government's registration system requires religious groups to submit personal information on their membership to be allowed to worship.

The Kingdom of Aksum, covering much of modern-day Eritrea and the Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia, arose somewhere around the first or second centuries.

[16] Eritrea was also one of the first Islamic settlements in Africa, as a group of Muslims facing persecution in Mecca migrated to the Kingdom of Aksum.

Uthman had been driven out of Hejaz and found shelter at Axum in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia under the protection of the Axumite king, Aṣḥama ibn Abjar.

Al-Ghazi led Muslim forces consisting of Somali, Harari, Oromo, Afar, Saho, Argobba, Hadiya, Silte and Gurage soldiers from present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.

Within four years he laid waste to the majority of the Christian highlands, including the Tigray Region of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

In the 19th century the Italians began to bring Eritrea under their sphere of influence and introduced Roman Catholicism again.

The ancient empire of the Kingdom of Aksum centered in north Tigray and the central highlands of Eritrea had intimate connections with the Mediterranean world in which Christianity grew.

Christianity arrived in the Eritrean and Tigrayan area in the 4th century, growing dynamically in the pre-existing Jewish/Animistic mixed environment.

The Eritrean Orthodox have their origins in the 4th century Coptic mission of Syrian Frumentius in East Africa, when the first Archbishop was elected for the Aksumite Empire, under Ezana of Axum (r. 320–360).

Abune Antonios was elected on 5 March 2004 and enthroned as the third Patriarch of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church of Eritrea on 24 April 2004.

Before the era of Italian Eritrea, Roman Catholicism was already introduced into the country by Saint Justin de Jacobis and the Vincentian Fathers.

[22] By the 9th century, Islam had spread to the eastern coasts of Eritrea and some indigenous groups in the region began adopting the religion.

[22]In the late 11th century, a Muslim sultanate was founded in Dahlak, which was a prosperous kingdom that had trading contacts with Ethiopia, Yemen, India, and Egypt.

By the 13th century, numerous nomadic groups in Eritrea began adopting Islam and helped further propagate the faith.

The present Eritrean Jewish community is believed to be started by Yemenite Jews from Yemen attracted by new commercial opportunities driven by Italian colonial expansion in the late 19th century.

The Jewish population then later increased from European refugees coming to Eritrea to escape the anti-Semitic regimes in Europe at the time.

Among those imprisoned was future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir and Haim Corfu, a founder of Beitar Jerusalem.

Judaism is not one of the four religions recognized by the Eritrean government and indeed, as of 2006 there was only one last native Jew left in Eritrea – Sami Cohen, who tends to the Asmara Synagogue and cemetery.

Most belong to various Afro-Asiatic communities, especially the Tigre, Saho, Afar, Rashaida, Beja and Bilen ethnic groups.

[19] About 5% of the Tigrinya are also Muslims; they are known as the Jeberti, though they claim a different ethnic background from the Biher-Tigrinya; the Rashaida are an Arab tribe who migrated from the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia in the 19th century.

[25] The Eritrean constitution provides for the freedom of thought, conscience, and belief; and guarantees the right to practice and manifest any religion.

73/1995 clearly enshrines the strict principle of secularism, it also states that every Eritrean national's right of freedom of thought, conscience and belief is guaranteed and respected by the law.

The decree additionally prohibits religious groups from initiating or offering social services based on sectarian parameters.

Members of religious groups that are unregistered or otherwise not in compliance with the law are subject to penalties under the provisional penal code.

Political neutrality and conscientious objection to military service are key aspects of faith for Jehovah’s Witnesses.