Talk:Religion in Eritrea/Archive 1

The Christian population
The Christian population of Eritrea is undercounted by editors on Wikipedia.

Christians are between 50-60% of the population of Eritrea.

But the Chechenyan editor Groznia wants to change the demographics of Eritrea so that it fits to his religious agenda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:CB:4F0E:B300:8DDF:419B:D3AC:46E5 (talk) 12:11, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Support There is no need for two articles on the same subject. The idea is that if two articles about the same subject contain different information then they should be merged, note that this does not mean that the material from one article will be deleted. If this article is less detailed and incorrect then the merging in will help correct that. Two articles makes it more likely that one will turn out to be nothing more than a POV fork. The merge tag was added here and later removed. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 00:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Support per nom and CambridgeBayWeather. No need for two separate articles on the same subject. Middayexpress (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Support - Religion in Eritrea is little more than a less detailed duplicate 213.104.247.28 (talk) 02:32, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Religious persecution.
From UserTalk Pages. copied by Staticd (talk) 09:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

(To:83.86.123.208) Saying that the section is non-neutral and phrased as fodder for extremist views is perfectly valid but it is definitely not baseless. A quick search gave both a BBC and an amnesty international page on the situation there. The section needs work but it seems to me that it should be part of the wikipedia article on the country. Will you help clean it up? Staticd (talk) 08:49, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Another Google search gives you a bunch of sources saying the "Islamist" government of Eritrea is persecuting Christians. The bottom line is that a section without any sources and with accusations of such gravity doesn't belong here. 83.86.123.208 (talk) 09:14, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Do we move it to the talk page? (I feel) BBC doesnt usually shoot its mouth off. Point taken about the "accusations of such gravity". The balanced facts do deserve to be part of the article and untill then do we leave it at:

Eritrea officially recognizes only Sunni Islam and the Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran Christian churches. Certain religious groups are reported to be persecuted by the current Eritrean Government. These groups include Islam and independent Protestants. Those practising religions that are not recognised face imprisionment.

BTW i'm copying this discussion to the Talk:Religion_in_Eritrea page. Some one in the future is otherwise bound to repeat whatever we already went over. I'll change the article to that for now. See what you can do for it too. Got to run for a class. CheersStaticd (talk) 09:41, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Some one clean this up Pleeese

Certain religious groups are reported to be persecuted by the current Eritrean Government. These groups include Islam and independent Protestants.

Islam Persecution
Accusations were made in 2007 that the current Eritrean Government is against Islam. According to these accusations made by the Muslim minority that exists in Eritrea, many Muslims are being put to jail by the high ranking Christian officers in the Eritrean Army. The Eritrean Government has made no comment on the accusation. Many Muslim separatists have joined Eritrean opposition groups based in Khartoum, Sudan and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia most notably the Eritrean Islamic Jihad to overthrow the current Eritrean Government. However, the majority of the time, these groups have been defeated by the Eritrean Army.

Many know that the past regimes of Eritrea and Ethiopia have usually been anti-Islamic. After the end of Ottoman rule, Eritrea was occupied by Italy and by a U.N. decision of 1952, it became a federal state linked to Ethiopia. However the people refused to accept the situation resulting in widespread public uprisings. On Nov 14 1962, the emperor Haile Selassie announced that he had assimilated Eritrea, using the internal disorder in Ethiopia as an excuse. With the Selassie period, there began a policy of opression and torture against Muslims. This continued under the rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam. During his rule thousands of mosques were demolished and many Muslims were evicted from Eritrea and seeked refuge in neighbouring Sudan. Muslim oppression was expected to end when Eritrea gained independence but this further continued under new leader, Isaias Afewerki. Under his reign many Mosques and Islamic schools were shut down and Muslims were further oppressed. He ceased Arabic if being one of the official languages of Eritrea which caused great controversy over the minority Muslim population. Many Muslims in Eritrea blame an ally of past Ethiopian regimes and the current Eritrean regime, Israel. Israel is said to be the reason why all the governments in Eritrea have seemed to have an anti-Islamic view.

Protestant Persecution
Eritrea officially recognizes only Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran Christian churches. In May 2002, it outlawed independent Protestant churches, closing their buildings and banning them from meeting in private homes. Many independent Protestants have been jailed since then because of their faith. Eritrea's government currently imprisons more than 2,000 independent Christians. All have been denied legal counsel or trial, with no written charges filed against them.

Moved from article by Staticd (talk) 09:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Re-write
I went through the references to see if they matched what was being said in the article. I wasn't surprised to find that in some cases what the source said was changed for use in the article.

For example looking at this version in the section "Religious affiliation by geography and by ethnic group" is states "Approximately 60 percent of the Bilen are Christian, the majority being Catholic. Most members of the Tigre, Saho, Nara, Afar, Rashaida, and Beja, ethnic groups are Muslim." and it is sourced to the International Religious Freedom Report 2007: Eritrea. However, what the source actually says is "Most members of the Tigre, Saho, Nara, Afar, Rashaida, Beja, and Blen ethnic groups are Muslim. Approximately 40 percent of the Blen are Christian, the majority being Catholic." which is quite different to what this article said.

Another problem was that a lot of the article was referenced to the Pew Research Center report. However, the only thing the report says about Eritrea is that Muslims make up 36.5% of the population and the Shia are less than 1%. So the second sentence of the article said "According to the Pew Research Center, 62.5% are followers of Christianity, mostly followers of Oriental Orthodoxy, and to a lesser extent, Roman Catholicism, whilst the remaining 36.5% of the population of Eritrea is Sunni Muslim." and other than the 36.5% none of that appears in the reference given. I have changed that to use the Muslim and Christian breakdown which does give figures.

So in all I redid the lead and first section along with making sure that other sections matched what was given in the source. Also for some reason the Abrahamic Religions section contained a lot of links to disambiguation pages rather than to the proper articles. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 06:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Contradictions should be removed.
Somewhere it reads that 36% - 50% are muslims, yet the infobox suggested 36% to be muslim. There are some more. Bladesmulti (talk) 03:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * There's a dynamic ip that keeps fiddling with the figures. This is touched on in the post above. Middayexpress (talk) 16:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, I fixed the figures. The ip had apparently reversed them around; the maximum for Islam should've read 50% and the minimum for Christianity was around 43%. The maximum for traditional faiths and other religions was also around 2%, or 1.1 perentage points higher. Middayexpress (talk) 17:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

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