Add all the lay people who work full-time or part-time in churches, synagogues and mosques, from music directors to secretaries and janitors, and the religious work force probably surpasses one million.
The latest Lonely Planet guide to West Africa devotes just four pages to a country five times bigger than Britain, saying: "Its landscapes, monuments, mosques and music bars are off-limits, sealed from tourists by a conflict that is threatening the culture of this remarkable country".
And here there is a lot of local sound from the nearby mosque, animals, voices, music and tuk-tuk beeps spilling into my work.
She warned that "No Music Before Mosques," one of the tales, "might not find favour with the orthodox and yet it is for them it is written".
"No Music Before Mosques" tells of a village flutist who plays melodies dedicated to God at each of the five daily prayer times prescribed in Islam.
I spoke about faith, fear and love with Feisal Rauf, the imam behind the so-called Ground Zero Mosque; I talked about Sufi music with Pakistan's great female singer Abida Parveen; and I received an explanation about true authority in the Islamic world from revered British scholar Abdal Hakim Murad.
Recent polling has suggested that voters themselves are less wed to the old definitions of secular and religious in a country where Mr. Ataturk once considered putting pews in mosques and introducing classical Western music at services.
He wasn't vindictive … He went to the mosque, but went clubbing, made rap music, smoked hash, drank.
Membership in any of seven voluntary organizations (mosque or religious organization, art or music or educational organization, labor union, political party, environmental organization, professional association, and sport or recreational organization) was used to assess respondents' linking social capital.
Acoustical design of mosques is critical considering speech and music related activity patterns held in such religious spaces.
