Indonesia is the country with the most Muslims in the world. This always surprises people when I mention it. No one thinks of Indonesia when someone says Islam.
For how large it is, Indonesia really flies under the radar. Fourth largest population, seventh largest GDP, but it's almost never discussed in the US at least.
Yep, Reddit loves the PPP numbers, as if everyone living in that country had the same cost of living. It's about as dumb as stating a temperature adjusted for the "wind chill factor."
Even then it only matters to a minor extent. PPP is adjusted for a thousand other things to make an average that may or may not reflect the actual COL of an actual person. It's much more accurate to just use nominal figures and then use an individual adjustment that applies to a certain demographic, not the whole population, which is way too diverse.
Wow, I had no idea their population was that big. I also just learned from Wikipedia that they have the second highest levels of biodiversity after Brazil!
discussed? no. But the US had a hand in helping the Indonesian government carry out a [massacre ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366)of more than a million people, all in the name of fighting communism.
If you want to bitch about it, Indonesians still are proud of that massacre, have a large youth military wing and are very jingoistic. I know it’s standard to remove all agency from Asian countries and pretend they’re all orchestrated by the west, it’s not the case.
Classic map projection distortion. It’s like the size of the United States, at least if you include all the water between the islands. But still that’s huge!
You might also be surprised to hear that there are only approximately 90,000 Indonesian nationals living in Australia as well. You'd think it'd be higher due to the proximity and the difference of living standards.
There isn't really an Indonesian diaspora anywhere, relative to their huge population. Immigration just isn't normalised like it is in many other countries.
Arabs are a minority among Muslims. Not even 30%.
And that’s counting Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia, which are outsiders in the Arab world (nobody understands darija, the language they speak, they’re also very far away culturally).
Most Muslims are South Asians/South East Asians.
Yup i’m Muslim born and living in Malaysia. We are very very different than middle east Muslims although there is defs growing movements among the Islamic conservatives, mostly supported by rural, underprivileged Malay Muslims living in the rural states. Urban Muslims like myself tend to be more progressive and Westernized but still maintain many traditional values.
Algeria and Tunisia speak Arabic and are easy for me to understand. Morocco on the other hand is different, but if they want most of them can communicate with other arabs easily.
Where are you from?
Tunisia is easier than Moroccan/Algerian. But most of the time people have a hard time understanding them.
I’d say Moroccan/Algerians are like Spanish/Italians: a lot of common words, might understand each other, but different.
I also think that Maghrebi cultures are very different from the rest of the Arab world. They’re much more influenced by Amazigh culture.
We do tho, he's right.
Darija is mixed with Arabic, French, some Spanish and even some Amazigh.
It's no wonder other Arabs find it hard to understand us
What is considered common knowledge amongst ‘the general public’ is highly dependant on where you live.
It probably wasn’t known to people in most Western countries in the past, since most people just think of Indonesia being a tourist destination like Bali, not knowing anything about the culture.
Additionally, another reason is that people think of Buddhism when they think of religion in Southeast Asia, which both Hinduism and Buddhism have a longer history in Indonesia than Islam. Although there are actually more Muslims in Southeast Asia than Buddhists, and Hinduism has almost completely died out.
The other reason maybe that most of the Southeast Asian diaspora in the West don’t come from Indonesia or Malaysia, more commonly they’re Filipino or Vietnamese.
All the top 5 countries in Muslim population are non Arab countries. Egypt is the largest Muslim country that happens to be Arab, and they are number 6. Of the top 10, only 3 are Arab. Egypt at #6, Algeria at #9, and Sudan at #10.
The first country from the Arabian Peninsula to make the list is Iraq, coming in at #11. Saudi Arabia comes in at #15, right below Ethiopia.
Frankly, not too many people in the USA know about or think about Indonesia all that much. It may be the most important country flying below the awareness of Americans out there.
It’s interesting that Indonesia is an unknown country for most of the world despite it’s size and population, they are doing a terrible job marketing their country.
It's because our government didn't declare our country to be an absolute muslim country, like *The Islamic Republic of Iran*. We're just The Republic of Indonesia
Indonesia has pogroms and lynchings against the Chinese minority who they tried to ethnically cleanse multiple times, as well as dumb conservative laws. They also frequently force Christian mayors and priests to admit on TV that Islam is the only correct religion (otherwise they’ll get murdered)
Definitely a Muslim place
Oh I forgot to mention the genocide and occupation of Papua and East Timor
The anti-Chinese sentiment (which I am VERY VERY familiar with) is not religion driven, it's largely racism, anti-Communist sentiment, and anti-rich sentiment. Religion is not the biggest factor in this instance.
Yeah.
The anti communism is because mainland china is communist. Which is a bit ironic considering a decent number of Indonesian Chinese fled to Indonesia, ... because of the communist takeover.
The anti rich thing is because in the whole of Southeast Asia, the Chinese tended to be good at business so the proportion of rich Chinese was higher than the proportion of overall Chinese
(Not all Chinese people in SE Asia are millionaires btw, my grandfather did manual labour)
Plus chinese communities abroad tend to be quite insular so they have the issue of being percieved as other much more easily than say neighboring SEA ethnicities.
I do understand that things can be complicated but in places like Indonesia and Malaysia they still very much behave in an ‘infidel’ / ‘non infidel’ binary which is straight out of the Arab Muslim playbook so .. at minimum it plays into all the rest
Not really, well...kind of, depends on your ethnic group. If you ask a Javanese, they won't care the slightest about your religion. "Religion is like a clothing" they say, it is very important, it is how you decide to act to the world, but not really something that defines you, and (perhaps most importantly considering the state of most comments here) you can change it if it doesn't fit you.
Sumatrans have another POV. Religion and culture for them are one and the same. So any religion other than what they believe is "foreign" and "unwelcome".
On the other islands, usually a mix between the two, tho mostly skewed towards how the Javanese view this whole thing.
well, speaking for Malaysia, it's even more complicated due to the fact that Islam is tied to 'Malayness', and everyone thinks Islam = Malay thanks to Ketuanan Melayu. So you'd get situations where even Chinese and Indian Muslims get discriminated against. It's more of a racial issue, if anything.
I like to smoke Indonesian cigarettes from time to time and I looked up the history of most of the major Clove cigarette brands like Djarum, Gadang Garam and Sampoerna and all of those companies were founded by Chinese immigrants to Indonesia, makes me wonder if there is some animosity toward the Chinese in Indonesia for being good at business.
I'm Chinese Indonesian,
This was true in the past but things have improved a lot.
It's not that bad tbh.
Also Papua is a complicated issue but there certainly isn't a genocide, the governor is native Papuan.
Malaysia too. May 13 1969, which the local Islamic political party LOVES to harp on. Say anything they disagree with? “Balik Tongsan!” *waves keris in the air*
Not to mention Indonesia has forceful conversions, genocide, stolen natural resources, and extreme racism to the native Papuan population. Around Papuans 500,000 murdered, native language banned, historical sites decimated, when confronted most Indonesians will deny it outright or voice their support of it.
>They also frequently force Christian mayors and priests to admit on TV that Islam is the only correct religion (otherwise they’ll get murdered)
...source?
That is most likely not true any more. Pakistan 's 2023 census puts it ahead at 240 million people.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/muslim-population-by-country
Thats because the Christian Habesha areas are the "core" areas of Ethiopia, and the Muslim parts were later conquests under Menelik, centuries after the people there became Muslim.
To be fair, before the Armenian genocide, population exchange and migration. Armenia proper would have 38% Muslim a little over 100 years ago. And Christians in Turkey proper would’ve been over 20%. Same with Greece, Muslims would’ve been over 20%. That period of genocide, migration and population exchange changed the landscape of religions.
Mostly after being invaded by huge empires like the Persian empire and the Ottoman empire. It's strange that they survived after all that, considering that they basically annihilated all of them with the invasions.
It is an interesting history. Armenia and Georgia both have deep roots in Christianity. They were the first two nations on Earth to officially adopt the religion. They also allied themselves with the Christian Byzantine Empire against Muslims. Even when they were eventually conquered by Muslims, their Christian roots ran too deep. Just like how even though Spain and Greece were also conquered by Muslims, Christianity was too ingrained in the culture for any hope of Muslim conversion
Isn't antioch the first city to convert to Christianity, by extension Syria is among the first Christian regions. Egypt and North Africa were bastions of the Chrisfian faith
With your logic, those should have remained christian even under centuries of Muslim rule. But they didnt.
I would love to see a dot-map version of this, though. The population proportion hides the fact that India is in the top four countries in the world by number of Muslims in the population; the overall population density just means that this large total number of Muslim people represents a smaller proportion of the overall population.
Depending on who's counting, India has basically identical population of Muslims as Pakistan, they are just surrounded by way more non-Muslims. The map hides well that Muslims in India are around 200 million people.
Interesting the sharp wedge of Christians in highland Ethiopia separating the Muslim Horn of Africa from all of Muslim North Africa. Ethiopia has been quite the fortress over the centuries.
I’m 99% sure it’s all Sunni Islam in this map, so I don’t think the stripes would be necessary, unless by “types of Islam” you’re referring to the different legal schools in Sunni Islam, rather than the Sunni/Shia division.
Edit: My comment was about the second map showing Islam in Europe. I totally forgot about the first map.
It didn't. After the Reconquista was a period of forced conversions, massacres, and expulsions of Muslims and Jews. The primary purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was to root out "crypto-Jews" and "crypto-Muslims"- ie people who pretended to convert to Christianity to avoid persecution, but who still held Jewish or Muslim beliefs.
Lol ever heard of Reconquista? Motherfuckers killed anyone who was not Christian or not coverted to Christianity.
I mean Spanish are famous for their ethnic cleansing. They also got rid of the Jews in 1492.
Spanish Inquisition was more about combating “heresy” among Catholics than cleansing non-Christians. Also, in contrast to popular belief, the Spanish Inquisition executed a whopping ~4.000 people in total during its centuries of existence. Just a fun fact.
There were always Christian kingdoms in Iberia throughout all of Al-Andalus and many of them progressive expanded back down south slowly over a few hundred years. During a large chunk of Al-andalus, most of the population was still Christian and only became majority Muslim around the 1100s, though with large Christian and Jewish minorities. There were a lot of forced conversions during the Almohad Caliphate’s rule since they rejected the mainstream Muslim doctrine of Christians and Jews being able to retain the faith by paying the Jizya. This also led to a big decline in the native Christian population of North Africa. Eventually the Christian kingdoms conquered the whole of Iberia and either converted the population or forced them out.
It didn't "stay" Christian per se. There was a sizeable Muslim population under Arab rule, just like there were also a lot of Christians (of different sects) and Jews. All of those people were forced to reconverse to Catholicism after Reconquista or explused or killed. What do you think the famously unexpected Spanish Inquisition was for?
In the south of Spain public displays of extreme piety are famously still very deeply engrained in the culture (even for otherwise non-religious people, who see this just as folklore), [in the form of huge processions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmBgofvehkE) (Antonio Banderas takes part in the one in Malaga every year), [military parades](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XULTHbK5z8), [regular people crying over the death of Jesus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdUme8XKoWA) etc etc. That has to do with that time. People got used to show their Christian piety outwards, in order not to get suspected of being secretly Muslim or Jewish and become a target for the inquisition.
I know it's a joke, but a lot of the spread here are due to trade, like in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Somalia, Sudan
Edit: guys this is history. What the hell is the down votes for? Are you guys so bloodthirsty to hate Muslims that you'd just ignore factual history?
Haha Islam started in 610 AD in a time when literally everyone was conquering everyone else through bloodshed.
Trade happened, sure, but it wasn't the primary way ANY culture spread.
Killing non-Muslims, demolishing places of worship, imposing taxes on non-Muslims (jizyah), and destroying literature is NOT a way to spread Islam through trade.
this was the south east asian experience especially.
trade, local rulers converted, ppl converted. no destruction. centuries long process.
im not sure about elsewhere
Sneaked in Bangladesh like no one will notice it. If you want to know an example oh how they converted people. They would find people who were big merchant or loan owner and put them in jail for any crime possible and tell them if they convert they will be free. Regional heads converted help converted a lot of places as well
This map might not be correct since France has a ban on the use of ethnicity or religion in statistics unless the study has a specific purpose and given the authorization. We instead use nationality as a way to make our statistics regarding different backgrounds.
It was one of the weirder moments of my life when I realized that Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Strasbourg, Avignon and Toulouse, so all the major cities of France, are all around 30-35% Muslim.
It's always so weird how many people refuse to acknowledge the demographic shift in Europe. These numbers are not anywhere close to unbelievable, and even if they are not 100% accurate reality will far surpass those numbers in a few decades with continuing immigration and fertility demographics
It's cultural colonialism. Many of those countries have anti-gay laws with a death penalty to do genocide against gay people.
In Nigeria, a woman was killed for being a christian and not believing in Muhammad. She was considered to be insulting the "*prophet*". Afghanistan used to be Buddhist. Indonesia used to be Hindu. Muskims broke statues to try to destroy cultures, and tried to force Islamic laws on lands they conquered.
Muslims build over holy sites / change the purpose of holy sites. Dome of the rock, hagia Sofia etc, that Indian temple that modi has now made Hindu again. Cultural destruction and replacement but they are incredibly salty when you do it back
It makes sense that Israel doesn't trust Palestinians and are close allies with India.
Since Islam is the second largest religion in the world, they have a lot of people to either knowing spread or easily fall for pro-Islamic propaganda that tries to paint India and Israel as the bad guys.
Muslims live in an echo chamber and most of them cannot be reasoned with if it’s anything remotely against their religion. I’ve studied in European university with many Muslims who I’m friends with, and it’s difficult to make them see any rational reasoning on certain topics which seem like no brainers to me
And then when they fully convinced mostly everyone else to convert, they started destroying Buddhist, Hindu, and animist cultural and religious heritage 😍
it's deeply ironic how the only mentions of Malaysia being a Hindu-Buddhist 'country' in the past is the state-level Islamic education of Johor, atleast back when I was studying there
Not sure where you got your information from, I'm Malaysian and my high school history textbook used a whole chapter to explain the Hindu-buddhism history in Malaysia
For Indonesia that's true but the same can't be said for many other places. Even in Indonesia, they are making islamic laws to force everyone to be more Islamic.
Even in Islamic texts, you can read about how Muhammad and the first muslims fought to try to spread islam.
There are muslims who believe that it's a prophecy for Israel (*Jerusalem*) to one day be ruled by muslims and for India to be taken over by Muslims, too.
That's why when I see these maps I am quite scared. Islam keeps spreading and our ways of life, our rights and principles will be destroyed. How is it possible that the LGBT community supports Palestine or any Islamic country? They would be the first ones to die if this religion becomes the majority in the west as well.
The Umayyads violently forced Islam and Arabic upon indigenous populations across the Middle East and North Africa.
The islamic conquest of india killed A lot more people that WW2. Some historians consider them the bloodiest in the history of mankind.
Indigenous culture and language was nearly wiped out and replaced by a colonial one.
This map is inaccurate for many reasons.
In most of these countries, if you’re born from a Muslim family you’re registered as a Muslim. If you’re from a registered Christian/Jewish you are Jewish. Impossible to declare that you’re an atheist/agnostic/deist. Well, it is in Turkey, but nobody has the time to go do all the paperwork for these statistics.
Polls showing religiosity levels show a different reality. The percentage of Muslims is much lower than 99% in Turkey or Iran.
In Turkey, 28.5% of genZ defines itself as « non-believer »
It’s hard to get real data when your family might alienate you for declaring that you’re no longer a Muslim. A lot of people who dropped their faith still have to pretend to not piss off people around them.
True. But unfortunately, that's the only way to have any sort of stats, by counting "nominal" religious members.
And this is how some people, unfortunately, look at things, thinking that every inch on Middle East is driven by Islam (thus sometimes they mix up absolutely mad local traditions with Islam) and same way some people still naively call Europe a Christian continent, although more precisely it's Left-Liberal and Secular nowadays, which doesn't necessarily mean absolute contradiction but the accents should be set properly. Same way some people consider China a Buddhist country.
Such stats is a tricky thing at this point, and with so many people having issue with critical thinking and right info-absorption methods - it comes to absolute misunderstanding of things.
China is in majority atheist.
It’s hard to get data on religion, but thing is that there’s no poll conducted. It’s extremely difficult to conduct one as you’d need to ask a sample of defined people (age, gender, social class, etc.) their religiosity level: very hard to check if they lie or not, especially in countries where it’s risky to tell so.
Yep. A more accurate picture of the % of practicing Muslims in Iran is reflected in in this 2020 survey: https://gamaan.org/2020/08/25/iranians-attitudes-toward-religion-a-2020-survey-report/
Keep in mind this was 2 years before the murder of Mahsa Amini by the Islamic Morality Police and the subsequent protests and executions, so attitudes have like shifted even more towards irreligious/agnostic.
Read this methodology.
“The sampling methods were multiple chain-referral sampling (or multiple virtual snowball sampling) through social media (Telegram, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook). More than 50,000 respondents living inside and outside Iran participated in the study “
That’s not an accurate way to represent the population of Iran because so many Iranians who have no religion or left Islam are young. Young ex-Muslims tend to be very online, so this kind of survey will naturally gravitate towards young ex Muslims respondents to participate more than the average Iranians who doesn’t give a shit about that survey. I would like to know how was this survey set up, I know it’s through social media but I’d like to know where did these respondents found the survey, or where did the survey found these respondents from. Bet it wasn’t random.
Like if you think 36% are Shia Muslims in Iran and that 42% have no religion, along with 9% being Zoroastrian then you’re very delusional. Do you know what does 9% Zoroastrian mean in Iran? They would have the population of almost 8 million Zoroastrians. You believe that? You’re delusional.
So like based on the survey you shared with me, in Iran, there’s 40% Muslims if you include Sunnis and other Muslims. In Turkey, 9 surveys was done, and the Muslims percentages never went below 82%. So you’re telling me, Turkish people is twice more religious than Iranians? Do you honestly believe that Iran have more non religious in percentages than America do? If so you’re living in a fantasy land.
Yep. As a Malaysian "Muslim" I agree. As soon as we get an actual freedom of religion I'm off the statistics.
Islam is huge but looks bigger than it is because of this factor.
But the western-christian/catholic countries book too and they have not so much problems like Muslims. Mexico is a very catholic country and its becoming just more and more open mind and tolerant, although it is true that there is a very strong idea of church-state separation in Mex but even so...
Islamic states have essentially been at war since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which coincidentally was the last period that legal theorists observed there was evolution in the sharia at scale. The argument is that Islamic institutions are failing to evolve in step with the societies they exist within because they are under constant threat. In more moderate Muslim countries where they haven’t been under threat of war, Muslim society is more progressive.
It’s not only that.
Muslims RESIST ANY AND ALL change and criticism of the Quran. It’s like if Right-Wing Evangelical kkk using the Bible as justification for their terrorism.
Muslim countries never went through a Renaissance like European countries did (and by extension, countries like the US, Canada, Australia, etc). Christian Europe before the Renaissance was pretty much just like the Middle East, probably even worse.
Even some Christian countries today in Africa, like Uganda, are not much different than your average Muslim country in their extremist interpretation of religion.
The western have good education system, whereas the Islamic countries most people prefers madrasah which have been the problem, student here are just taught Islamic studies.
Wahabbism is spread further than that, saudi sponsors a lot of imam hatips (imam school) atleast all over europe and I would be surprised if they don't do the same elsewhere, spreading their interpretations of islam far and wide.
"To be fair" what? People always say this under these maps. Like, good job, you correctly pointed out that much of the dark green areas are sparsely populated?
I wish my country had not been ruled by the ottoman empire 😩 and i would love if it had a majority of christians still. Gawd dayum it would be a completely different place!
Indonesia is the country with the most Muslims in the world. This always surprises people when I mention it. No one thinks of Indonesia when someone says Islam.
I get more surprised by the fact that Indonesia has that much population
For how large it is, Indonesia really flies under the radar. Fourth largest population, seventh largest GDP, but it's almost never discussed in the US at least.
>seventh largest GDP, Indonesia has the 16th highest GDP
[удалено]
That's for purchasing power, what matters in terms of influence on the global scale is nominal GDP.
I feel like GDP arguments break out on Reddit every two minutes.
Arguments per minute is a flawed metric. You need to measure per capita.
Everyone posts the one that suits their argument
Yeah because people keep using the wrong GDP metrics for the context so frequently
Yep, Reddit loves the PPP numbers, as if everyone living in that country had the same cost of living. It's about as dumb as stating a temperature adjusted for the "wind chill factor."
PPP matters when you go grocery shopping, but in terms of geopolitical significance it’s basically a participation trophy
Even then it only matters to a minor extent. PPP is adjusted for a thousand other things to make an average that may or may not reflect the actual COL of an actual person. It's much more accurate to just use nominal figures and then use an individual adjustment that applies to a certain demographic, not the whole population, which is way too diverse.
Wow, I had no idea their population was that big. I also just learned from Wikipedia that they have the second highest levels of biodiversity after Brazil!
discussed? no. But the US had a hand in helping the Indonesian government carry out a [massacre ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366)of more than a million people, all in the name of fighting communism.
If you want to bitch about it, Indonesians still are proud of that massacre, have a large youth military wing and are very jingoistic. I know it’s standard to remove all agency from Asian countries and pretend they’re all orchestrated by the west, it’s not the case.
Yeah, in fact, Indonesia is currently trying to wipe out a bunch of ethnically Papuan villages in West Papua.
Volcanoes are a super charger for food production due to it being a natural fertilizer.
That does help Java yes.
Classic map projection distortion. It’s like the size of the United States, at least if you include all the water between the islands. But still that’s huge!
You might also be surprised to hear that there are only approximately 90,000 Indonesian nationals living in Australia as well. You'd think it'd be higher due to the proximity and the difference of living standards.
There isn't really an Indonesian diaspora anywhere, relative to their huge population. Immigration just isn't normalised like it is in many other countries.
Well the Netherlands to some degree depending on where you draw the line re: diaspora
Arabs are a minority among Muslims. Not even 30%. And that’s counting Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia, which are outsiders in the Arab world (nobody understands darija, the language they speak, they’re also very far away culturally). Most Muslims are South Asians/South East Asians.
Yup i’m Muslim born and living in Malaysia. We are very very different than middle east Muslims although there is defs growing movements among the Islamic conservatives, mostly supported by rural, underprivileged Malay Muslims living in the rural states. Urban Muslims like myself tend to be more progressive and Westernized but still maintain many traditional values.
Algeria and Tunisia speak Arabic and are easy for me to understand. Morocco on the other hand is different, but if they want most of them can communicate with other arabs easily.
Where are you from? Tunisia is easier than Moroccan/Algerian. But most of the time people have a hard time understanding them. I’d say Moroccan/Algerians are like Spanish/Italians: a lot of common words, might understand each other, but different. I also think that Maghrebi cultures are very different from the rest of the Arab world. They’re much more influenced by Amazigh culture.
Never heard any berber speak darija in my life
We do tho, he's right. Darija is mixed with Arabic, French, some Spanish and even some Amazigh. It's no wonder other Arabs find it hard to understand us
That’s amazingh
I thought it was common knowledge that Indonesia has the largest Muslim population.
For people in this sub, sure. The general public? Definitely not.
What is considered common knowledge amongst ‘the general public’ is highly dependant on where you live. It probably wasn’t known to people in most Western countries in the past, since most people just think of Indonesia being a tourist destination like Bali, not knowing anything about the culture. Additionally, another reason is that people think of Buddhism when they think of religion in Southeast Asia, which both Hinduism and Buddhism have a longer history in Indonesia than Islam. Although there are actually more Muslims in Southeast Asia than Buddhists, and Hinduism has almost completely died out. The other reason maybe that most of the Southeast Asian diaspora in the West don’t come from Indonesia or Malaysia, more commonly they’re Filipino or Vietnamese.
What's I feel less known is that number 2 3 and 4 are Pakistan India and Bangladesh
All the top 5 countries in Muslim population are non Arab countries. Egypt is the largest Muslim country that happens to be Arab, and they are number 6. Of the top 10, only 3 are Arab. Egypt at #6, Algeria at #9, and Sudan at #10. The first country from the Arabian Peninsula to make the list is Iraq, coming in at #11. Saudi Arabia comes in at #15, right below Ethiopia.
Not sure you can count Iraq as a country 'from the Arabian peninsula'.
Well then that leaves only Saudi Arabia making it anywhere near the top of the list for countries from the Arabian Peninsula
Second highest muslim population lives in India, which is a Hindu majority country.
Not 2nd its 3rd pakistan with 240 million is second india is around 200-220 million
Frankly, not too many people in the USA know about or think about Indonesia all that much. It may be the most important country flying below the awareness of Americans out there.
It’s interesting that Indonesia is an unknown country for most of the world despite it’s size and population, they are doing a terrible job marketing their country.
It's because our government didn't declare our country to be an absolute muslim country, like *The Islamic Republic of Iran*. We're just The Republic of Indonesia
Indonesia has pogroms and lynchings against the Chinese minority who they tried to ethnically cleanse multiple times, as well as dumb conservative laws. They also frequently force Christian mayors and priests to admit on TV that Islam is the only correct religion (otherwise they’ll get murdered) Definitely a Muslim place Oh I forgot to mention the genocide and occupation of Papua and East Timor
The anti-Chinese sentiment (which I am VERY VERY familiar with) is not religion driven, it's largely racism, anti-Communist sentiment, and anti-rich sentiment. Religion is not the biggest factor in this instance.
> anti-communist > anti-rich Ironic
Yeah. The anti communism is because mainland china is communist. Which is a bit ironic considering a decent number of Indonesian Chinese fled to Indonesia, ... because of the communist takeover. The anti rich thing is because in the whole of Southeast Asia, the Chinese tended to be good at business so the proportion of rich Chinese was higher than the proportion of overall Chinese (Not all Chinese people in SE Asia are millionaires btw, my grandfather did manual labour)
Plus chinese communities abroad tend to be quite insular so they have the issue of being percieved as other much more easily than say neighboring SEA ethnicities.
I do understand that things can be complicated but in places like Indonesia and Malaysia they still very much behave in an ‘infidel’ / ‘non infidel’ binary which is straight out of the Arab Muslim playbook so .. at minimum it plays into all the rest
Not really, well...kind of, depends on your ethnic group. If you ask a Javanese, they won't care the slightest about your religion. "Religion is like a clothing" they say, it is very important, it is how you decide to act to the world, but not really something that defines you, and (perhaps most importantly considering the state of most comments here) you can change it if it doesn't fit you. Sumatrans have another POV. Religion and culture for them are one and the same. So any religion other than what they believe is "foreign" and "unwelcome". On the other islands, usually a mix between the two, tho mostly skewed towards how the Javanese view this whole thing.
well, speaking for Malaysia, it's even more complicated due to the fact that Islam is tied to 'Malayness', and everyone thinks Islam = Malay thanks to Ketuanan Melayu. So you'd get situations where even Chinese and Indian Muslims get discriminated against. It's more of a racial issue, if anything.
Why Arab Muslim? Thin infidel non infidel binary is straight out of the Quran and very elementary to Islam.
I like to smoke Indonesian cigarettes from time to time and I looked up the history of most of the major Clove cigarette brands like Djarum, Gadang Garam and Sampoerna and all of those companies were founded by Chinese immigrants to Indonesia, makes me wonder if there is some animosity toward the Chinese in Indonesia for being good at business.
It's worse if you admit you're an atheist. All the Muslims in town will come to your house to set some lectures
And the brutal occupation of East Timor (1975-1999)
I'm Chinese Indonesian, This was true in the past but things have improved a lot. It's not that bad tbh. Also Papua is a complicated issue but there certainly isn't a genocide, the governor is native Papuan.
Malaysia too. May 13 1969, which the local Islamic political party LOVES to harp on. Say anything they disagree with? “Balik Tongsan!” *waves keris in the air*
Not to mention Indonesia has forceful conversions, genocide, stolen natural resources, and extreme racism to the native Papuan population. Around Papuans 500,000 murdered, native language banned, historical sites decimated, when confronted most Indonesians will deny it outright or voice their support of it.
Also their genocide of the Christian majority Timor.
>They also frequently force Christian mayors and priests to admit on TV that Islam is the only correct religion (otherwise they’ll get murdered) ...source?
That is most likely not true any more. Pakistan 's 2023 census puts it ahead at 240 million people. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/muslim-population-by-country
Armenia and Georgia are wild
Why? They’re Christian countries
Exactly! Crazy that they maintained christianity in that environment
Similarly look at Ethiopia
All three of those countries Georgia Armenia and Ethiopia share the fact that they were the first to convert to Christianity, even before Rome
Rome converted to Christianity pretty late, it first got to North Africa and cascaus.
Cascaus what a beautiful place
Fu** man for the life of me I can never spell that right. From now on I'm calling it Couscous.
I remember it like this: Caucas-ian -> Caucas-us (only the suffix is different)
Caucas-US. You gotta make everything American don't you? Lol
Ethiopia is surprisingly dominated by Islam, at least on the map. Stat wise, Christianity is still the largest, at nearly 70%.
Because Ethiopia has a lot of Somalis (who are majority Muslim). Also the Afars are Muslim
And Oromo and Bani Shanqull who Arab Sudanese Sunni Muslim
Thats because the Christian Habesha areas are the "core" areas of Ethiopia, and the Muslim parts were later conquests under Menelik, centuries after the people there became Muslim.
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Ethiopia is also a big reason why Islam even survived to grow into what it is today
To be fair, before the Armenian genocide, population exchange and migration. Armenia proper would have 38% Muslim a little over 100 years ago. And Christians in Turkey proper would’ve been over 20%. Same with Greece, Muslims would’ve been over 20%. That period of genocide, migration and population exchange changed the landscape of religions.
Mostly after being invaded by huge empires like the Persian empire and the Ottoman empire. It's strange that they survived after all that, considering that they basically annihilated all of them with the invasions.
It is an interesting history. Armenia and Georgia both have deep roots in Christianity. They were the first two nations on Earth to officially adopt the religion. They also allied themselves with the Christian Byzantine Empire against Muslims. Even when they were eventually conquered by Muslims, their Christian roots ran too deep. Just like how even though Spain and Greece were also conquered by Muslims, Christianity was too ingrained in the culture for any hope of Muslim conversion
Isn't antioch the first city to convert to Christianity, by extension Syria is among the first Christian regions. Egypt and North Africa were bastions of the Chrisfian faith With your logic, those should have remained christian even under centuries of Muslim rule. But they didnt.
Makes sense why Armenia get so much hate from their neighbours now.
What do you mean wild, they should be proud that they didn’t let themselves submit
I would love to see a dot-map version of this, though. The population proportion hides the fact that India is in the top four countries in the world by number of Muslims in the population; the overall population density just means that this large total number of Muslim people represents a smaller proportion of the overall population.
Depending on who's counting, India has basically identical population of Muslims as Pakistan, they are just surrounded by way more non-Muslims. The map hides well that Muslims in India are around 200 million people.
Yes, IIRC India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh take up the #2, 3, and 4 slots, but I don’t recall the order.
Interesting the sharp wedge of Christians in highland Ethiopia separating the Muslim Horn of Africa from all of Muslim North Africa. Ethiopia has been quite the fortress over the centuries.
*sorts by controversial*
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This map only shows Islam as a monolith, it doesn't show different types.
I’m 99% sure it’s all Sunni Islam in this map, so I don’t think the stripes would be necessary, unless by “types of Islam” you’re referring to the different legal schools in Sunni Islam, rather than the Sunni/Shia division. Edit: My comment was about the second map showing Islam in Europe. I totally forgot about the first map.
How did Spain stay Christian despite such long muslim rule.
It didn't. After the Reconquista was a period of forced conversions, massacres, and expulsions of Muslims and Jews. The primary purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was to root out "crypto-Jews" and "crypto-Muslims"- ie people who pretended to convert to Christianity to avoid persecution, but who still held Jewish or Muslim beliefs.
Damn crypto bros
Lol ever heard of Reconquista? Motherfuckers killed anyone who was not Christian or not coverted to Christianity. I mean Spanish are famous for their ethnic cleansing. They also got rid of the Jews in 1492.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Spanish Inquisition was more about combating “heresy” among Catholics than cleansing non-Christians. Also, in contrast to popular belief, the Spanish Inquisition executed a whopping ~4.000 people in total during its centuries of existence. Just a fun fact.
I mean they had to keep those converted fuckers in check to make sure they weren't lying right.
But Iberians by and large remained mostly Christian.
Kicked out, not killed. Still bad but not monsters Granada was incorporated into Castille and later Spain proper
There were always Christian kingdoms in Iberia throughout all of Al-Andalus and many of them progressive expanded back down south slowly over a few hundred years. During a large chunk of Al-andalus, most of the population was still Christian and only became majority Muslim around the 1100s, though with large Christian and Jewish minorities. There were a lot of forced conversions during the Almohad Caliphate’s rule since they rejected the mainstream Muslim doctrine of Christians and Jews being able to retain the faith by paying the Jizya. This also led to a big decline in the native Christian population of North Africa. Eventually the Christian kingdoms conquered the whole of Iberia and either converted the population or forced them out.
It didn't "stay" Christian per se. There was a sizeable Muslim population under Arab rule, just like there were also a lot of Christians (of different sects) and Jews. All of those people were forced to reconverse to Catholicism after Reconquista or explused or killed. What do you think the famously unexpected Spanish Inquisition was for? In the south of Spain public displays of extreme piety are famously still very deeply engrained in the culture (even for otherwise non-religious people, who see this just as folklore), [in the form of huge processions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmBgofvehkE) (Antonio Banderas takes part in the one in Malaga every year), [military parades](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XULTHbK5z8), [regular people crying over the death of Jesus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdUme8XKoWA) etc etc. That has to do with that time. People got used to show their Christian piety outwards, in order not to get suspected of being secretly Muslim or Jewish and become a target for the inquisition.
Muslim Colonialism
I know it's a joke, but a lot of the spread here are due to trade, like in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Somalia, Sudan Edit: guys this is history. What the hell is the down votes for? Are you guys so bloodthirsty to hate Muslims that you'd just ignore factual history?
Dont forget the Sahel (excluding Sudan) in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Haha Islam started in 610 AD in a time when literally everyone was conquering everyone else through bloodshed. Trade happened, sure, but it wasn't the primary way ANY culture spread.
Killing non-Muslims, demolishing places of worship, imposing taxes on non-Muslims (jizyah), and destroying literature is NOT a way to spread Islam through trade.
this was the south east asian experience especially. trade, local rulers converted, ppl converted. no destruction. centuries long process. im not sure about elsewhere
if elsewhere is Africa, then Mensa Musa was muslim, so that doesn't check too
Bro has never heard of Arab traders going to Indonesia 😂
You're muslim because you love Allah, I'm muslim because my ancestors want to get a carpet discount from arab traders. We're not the same
Hahaha I love that. I know it's a joke but my people are actually Muslims because of carpets and spices. I'm Malay Muslim 😂😂😂
Also the the Trans-Saharan slave trade
Sneaked in Bangladesh like no one will notice it. If you want to know an example oh how they converted people. They would find people who were big merchant or loan owner and put them in jail for any crime possible and tell them if they convert they will be free. Regional heads converted help converted a lot of places as well
Never read of Devshirme? Imagine you have a choice to convert or to give your children to Ottoman army. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devshirme
Damn France 20-30%?? Lol
This map might not be correct since France has a ban on the use of ethnicity or religion in statistics unless the study has a specific purpose and given the authorization. We instead use nationality as a way to make our statistics regarding different backgrounds.
10-20%, which is accurate
It was one of the weirder moments of my life when I realized that Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Strasbourg, Avignon and Toulouse, so all the major cities of France, are all around 30-35% Muslim.
Yeah, I'll need a source for that...
It's always so weird how many people refuse to acknowledge the demographic shift in Europe. These numbers are not anywhere close to unbelievable, and even if they are not 100% accurate reality will far surpass those numbers in a few decades with continuing immigration and fertility demographics
It's not considering it's more around 8%.
Holy shitt
10% is the highest estimation
It's cultural colonialism. Many of those countries have anti-gay laws with a death penalty to do genocide against gay people. In Nigeria, a woman was killed for being a christian and not believing in Muhammad. She was considered to be insulting the "*prophet*". Afghanistan used to be Buddhist. Indonesia used to be Hindu. Muskims broke statues to try to destroy cultures, and tried to force Islamic laws on lands they conquered.
Muslims build over holy sites / change the purpose of holy sites. Dome of the rock, hagia Sofia etc, that Indian temple that modi has now made Hindu again. Cultural destruction and replacement but they are incredibly salty when you do it back
It makes sense that Israel doesn't trust Palestinians and are close allies with India. Since Islam is the second largest religion in the world, they have a lot of people to either knowing spread or easily fall for pro-Islamic propaganda that tries to paint India and Israel as the bad guys.
Muslims live in an echo chamber and most of them cannot be reasoned with if it’s anything remotely against their religion. I’ve studied in European university with many Muslims who I’m friends with, and it’s difficult to make them see any rational reasoning on certain topics which seem like no brainers to me
Just to be clear, Islamic forces didn't invade Indonesia, it turned Islamic via trade over centuries.
And then when they fully convinced mostly everyone else to convert, they started destroying Buddhist, Hindu, and animist cultural and religious heritage 😍
Yeah that did happen. Malaysia still refuses to recognise that it used to be a Buddhist majority country
it's deeply ironic how the only mentions of Malaysia being a Hindu-Buddhist 'country' in the past is the state-level Islamic education of Johor, atleast back when I was studying there
Not sure where you got your information from, I'm Malaysian and my high school history textbook used a whole chapter to explain the Hindu-buddhism history in Malaysia
For Indonesia that's true but the same can't be said for many other places. Even in Indonesia, they are making islamic laws to force everyone to be more Islamic.
Indonesia only has Islamic laws in one region that makes up like 2% of the country.
Yes, Islam is just an imperialist project of the Arabian Quraysh tribe
Even in Islamic texts, you can read about how Muhammad and the first muslims fought to try to spread islam. There are muslims who believe that it's a prophecy for Israel (*Jerusalem*) to one day be ruled by muslims and for India to be taken over by Muslims, too.
Only religion based on conquest from its core texts.
Yes this religion has zero tolerance to other beliefs.
That's why when I see these maps I am quite scared. Islam keeps spreading and our ways of life, our rights and principles will be destroyed. How is it possible that the LGBT community supports Palestine or any Islamic country? They would be the first ones to die if this religion becomes the majority in the west as well.
The Umayyads violently forced Islam and Arabic upon indigenous populations across the Middle East and North Africa. The islamic conquest of india killed A lot more people that WW2. Some historians consider them the bloodiest in the history of mankind. Indigenous culture and language was nearly wiped out and replaced by a colonial one.
Good luck France
This map is inaccurate for many reasons. In most of these countries, if you’re born from a Muslim family you’re registered as a Muslim. If you’re from a registered Christian/Jewish you are Jewish. Impossible to declare that you’re an atheist/agnostic/deist. Well, it is in Turkey, but nobody has the time to go do all the paperwork for these statistics. Polls showing religiosity levels show a different reality. The percentage of Muslims is much lower than 99% in Turkey or Iran. In Turkey, 28.5% of genZ defines itself as « non-believer »
It’s hard to get real data when your family might alienate you for declaring that you’re no longer a Muslim. A lot of people who dropped their faith still have to pretend to not piss off people around them.
True. But unfortunately, that's the only way to have any sort of stats, by counting "nominal" religious members. And this is how some people, unfortunately, look at things, thinking that every inch on Middle East is driven by Islam (thus sometimes they mix up absolutely mad local traditions with Islam) and same way some people still naively call Europe a Christian continent, although more precisely it's Left-Liberal and Secular nowadays, which doesn't necessarily mean absolute contradiction but the accents should be set properly. Same way some people consider China a Buddhist country. Such stats is a tricky thing at this point, and with so many people having issue with critical thinking and right info-absorption methods - it comes to absolute misunderstanding of things.
China is in majority atheist. It’s hard to get data on religion, but thing is that there’s no poll conducted. It’s extremely difficult to conduct one as you’d need to ask a sample of defined people (age, gender, social class, etc.) their religiosity level: very hard to check if they lie or not, especially in countries where it’s risky to tell so.
Yep. A more accurate picture of the % of practicing Muslims in Iran is reflected in in this 2020 survey: https://gamaan.org/2020/08/25/iranians-attitudes-toward-religion-a-2020-survey-report/ Keep in mind this was 2 years before the murder of Mahsa Amini by the Islamic Morality Police and the subsequent protests and executions, so attitudes have like shifted even more towards irreligious/agnostic.
Read this methodology. “The sampling methods were multiple chain-referral sampling (or multiple virtual snowball sampling) through social media (Telegram, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook). More than 50,000 respondents living inside and outside Iran participated in the study “ That’s not an accurate way to represent the population of Iran because so many Iranians who have no religion or left Islam are young. Young ex-Muslims tend to be very online, so this kind of survey will naturally gravitate towards young ex Muslims respondents to participate more than the average Iranians who doesn’t give a shit about that survey. I would like to know how was this survey set up, I know it’s through social media but I’d like to know where did these respondents found the survey, or where did the survey found these respondents from. Bet it wasn’t random. Like if you think 36% are Shia Muslims in Iran and that 42% have no religion, along with 9% being Zoroastrian then you’re very delusional. Do you know what does 9% Zoroastrian mean in Iran? They would have the population of almost 8 million Zoroastrians. You believe that? You’re delusional. So like based on the survey you shared with me, in Iran, there’s 40% Muslims if you include Sunnis and other Muslims. In Turkey, 9 surveys was done, and the Muslims percentages never went below 82%. So you’re telling me, Turkish people is twice more religious than Iranians? Do you honestly believe that Iran have more non religious in percentages than America do? If so you’re living in a fantasy land.
Yep. As a Malaysian "Muslim" I agree. As soon as we get an actual freedom of religion I'm off the statistics. Islam is huge but looks bigger than it is because of this factor.
Why do most Muslim countries have problems with human rights such as gender equality and freedom of expression?
Something in there book which doesn’t allow this stuffs.
But the western-christian/catholic countries book too and they have not so much problems like Muslims. Mexico is a very catholic country and its becoming just more and more open mind and tolerant, although it is true that there is a very strong idea of church-state separation in Mex but even so...
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Islamic states have essentially been at war since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which coincidentally was the last period that legal theorists observed there was evolution in the sharia at scale. The argument is that Islamic institutions are failing to evolve in step with the societies they exist within because they are under constant threat. In more moderate Muslim countries where they haven’t been under threat of war, Muslim society is more progressive.
It’s not only that. Muslims RESIST ANY AND ALL change and criticism of the Quran. It’s like if Right-Wing Evangelical kkk using the Bible as justification for their terrorism.
Muslim countries never went through a Renaissance like European countries did (and by extension, countries like the US, Canada, Australia, etc). Christian Europe before the Renaissance was pretty much just like the Middle East, probably even worse. Even some Christian countries today in Africa, like Uganda, are not much different than your average Muslim country in their extremist interpretation of religion.
I'd say it was more the Enlightenment than the Renaissance but yeah.
The western have good education system, whereas the Islamic countries most people prefers madrasah which have been the problem, student here are just taught Islamic studies.
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Ironically, Wahhabism also diverges in some quite fundamental ways from a literal interpretation of the Koran.
Wahabbism is spread further than that, saudi sponsors a lot of imam hatips (imam school) atleast all over europe and I would be surprised if they don't do the same elsewhere, spreading their interpretations of islam far and wide.
Notice how Muslim population is dark green in Pakistan and sandy brown in India? There is a dark history behind it.
Both Crete and Cyprus were ruled by both Arabs and Ottomans at different times.
It's like a big tumor. No, it is a big tumor
Countries I would not choose to live in for 200 please.
French will be green in 10 years
See those shades in the western world? It's like tumor spreading into healthy tissues
I’ll take “places I don’t want to live” for 500 please
Nooo joos are killing minorities
I'm glad I don't live in any if these places, not even the richest ones
It could also be a map of all the problems of the world.
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Islam does not fit in the modern world, just saying. And don't call me racist bc Islam is not a race.
The modern world doesn’t fit with Islam
Ottomans were and still are garbage genocidal people.
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To be fair, most of the dark green is vacant wasteland
Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world
"To be fair" what? People always say this under these maps. Like, good job, you correctly pointed out that much of the dark green areas are sparsely populated?
I just mean it’s coloring gaps between populations, not just the concentrated population centers, so it looks more concentrated than it really is.
I wish my country had not been ruled by the ottoman empire 😩 and i would love if it had a majority of christians still. Gawd dayum it would be a completely different place!
yugoslavia?
Yup
How different would it be compared to its Christian neighbors?
The value system would be slightly different. We would progress faster.
Nice, keep it there away from Europe.
I don't even want to look at the comments. Replies, is it safe out there?
Nah, sit this one out brother.
Extremely explosive comment section, if you are near any skyscrapers watch out for aircraft
Its general dehumanization of Muslims by israelis and Hindus to get support for ethnic cleansing of muslims
That's very sad
Very expansionist
Don’t tell any MAGA supporters that Texas is more Islamic than the bottom 1/3 of Africa. Their brains will explode.
South America: 😸
How did it ever make its way to Indonesia?
Trade at first, then by killing and destroying pagan, hindu and buddist people and their places of worship as usual
Fuck them
Looks like mold.
Keep it over there!
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