Religiously, Afghans are over 99% Muslims : approximately 80-89% Sunni , 10-19% Shi'a , and 1% other. Until the 1890s, the region around Nuristan was known as Kafiristan (land of the kafirs ) because of its inhabitants: the Nuristani , an ethnically distinctive people who practiced animism , polytheism and shamanism .

Up until the mid-1980s, there were possibly about 50,000 Hindus and Sikhs living in different cities, mostly in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Ghazni.

There was also a small Jewish community in Afghanistan who emigrated to Israel and the United States by the end of the last century, and only one individual, Zablon Simintov , remains today.