World 26/02/12 Asian nations among religiously most diverse in the world

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Singapore is the most religiously diverse country, while the US ranks first among nations with very large populations

An interracial inter-religious harmony event organized by the Thye Hua Kwan society to raise awareness of religious and racial harmony in Singapore in a file photo. (AFP)

By UCA News reporter

Published: February 14, 2026 03:53 AM GMT

Updated: February 14, 2026 04:09 AM GMT

Several countries in Asia are among the religiously most diverse in the world, according to a new study by the US-based Pew Research Center.

The study titled Diversity Around the World explored religious diversity in countries and societies as of 2020, the center said in a press release on Feb. 12.

Singapore is the world’s most religiously diverse country as of 2020, the study said. The tiny city-state has 31 percent Buddhists, 20 percent non-religious, 19 percent Christians, 16 percent Muslims, 5 percent Hindus, and 9 percent adherents of other faiths.

Suriname ranks second and is the only Latin American country in the top 10. About half of Suriname’s residents (53%) are Christians. The rest are mainly Hindus (22%), Muslims (13%), and religiously unaffiliated people (8%).

Most of the other places in the top 10 are in the Asia-Pacific region (Taiwan, South Korea, and Australia) or in sub-Saharan Africa (Mauritius, Guinea-Bissau, Togo, and Benin).

France is the only European country on the top 10 list. Its population is largely Christian (46%) and religiously unaffiliated (43%), with a sizable Muslim minority (9%).

The United States ranks 32nd in overall ranking. However, the US ranks first among the 10 most populous nations in religious diversity, followed by Nigeria, Russia, and Brazil.

This analysis divides the world’s population into seven categories — Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, adherents of all other religions, and people with no religious affiliation — and measures how evenly these groups are represented within each country or territory.

The study covered a total of 201 countries and territories and used the Religious Diversity Index (RDI) for ranking.

Possible scores range from 0 (for a country made up entirely of a single religious group) to 10 (for a country with perfectly even distributions of all seven groups, each making up about 14% of the population).

With a score of 9.3, Singapore comes closer to an even distribution of religious groups than any other country. By comparison, South Korea’s score is 7.3, France’s is 6.9, and the United States’ score is 5.8.

No country has a score of 10. But three countries have scores near 0, making them the least religiously diverse places in the world: Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia. In each, Muslims represent 99.8% or more of the population.

Overall, Muslims make up at least 99% of the population in eight of the 10 least religiously diverse countries and territories. The other two — Timor-Leste and Moldova — have populations that are almost entirely Christian.

Diversity in the world’s largest societies

The United States emerges as the most religiously diverse when focused on the world’s 10 most populous countries, each of which is home to at least 120 million people.

In 2020, Christians in the US made up 64 percent, 30 percent were non-religious, and 6 percent are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and other faiths.

Nigeria is the second-most religiously diverse of these big countries. Muslims and Christians each make up about 40 percent.

Pakistan, where Muslims account for 97% of all residents, is the least religiously diverse of the 10 most populous countries.

The Asia-Pacific region, with an overall RDI score of 8.7 and a very high level of diversity, is the most religiously diverse of the six regions in the analysis.

The Asia-Pacific region is home to many millions of religiously unaffiliated people, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and people in the “other religions” umbrella category. Jews are the only major group with a small presence in this region.

No religious category constitutes a majority in the Asia-Pacific region. The largest single group – the religiously unaffiliated – makes up only about a third of the region’s population.

Three regions in this analysis have a high level of diversity: North America (with an RDI score of 6.0), sub-Saharan Africa (5.9) and Europe (5.6). In each of these regions, Christians make up a majority of the overall population. The second-largest group — the religiously unaffiliated in North America and Europe, and Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa — makes up a quarter or more.

The Latin America-Caribbean region falls in the moderate diversity category, with an RDI score of 3.1. The region has a large Christian majority and a modest share of unaffiliated people.

The Middle East-North Africa region, with an RDI score of 1.3 and a low level of diversity, is the least diverse of the regions we studied, with a population that is 94% Muslim.

This region includes five of the world’s 10 least religiously diverse countries and territories: Yemen, Morocco, Western Sahara, Iraq and Tunisia.