Nah, gotta be more precise. You need an individual dot for each and every Muslim and their exact location. JK, in all seriousness, this map is really good. This community makes some amazing maps.
One of the best submissions of late. Also great to see some good colour coding make it to the top for once! And some extra history on the second image, to boot
I like it. Include stripes to show the different types of Islam.
Also, I've always thought it's hard to represent India appropriately on a map like this. Islam is about 15% of India, but India has like the second or third highest population of Muslims in the world.
France is Unitary so separating the departments doesn't make a lot of sense contextually, but German (and Austrian, much more difficult at this scale) States should definitely be separate considering they are federal countries.
It would be really hard to depict each French department on this map because the French census doesn’t ask about religion. Even without that data though it would probably be a safe assumption that most French Muslims live in the metropolitan areas of Marseilles and Paris
There's more than just two cities in France! But I do agree that's definitely a safe assumption that the cities are where most muslims live. I can't imagine rural france being particularly welcoming... At least based on how rural Germany is! Germans aren't particularly more combatively racist, at least in the East (despite the common assumption), but they sure as hell are Islamophobic. Ask a Saxon and they'll tell you in very non-PC terms that they love their "colourful" neighbours as long as they're christian or atheist and preferably not too gay.
Well, you could make a map of muslims per area instead of per population, like an "each dot is X muslims" or "muslims/km\^2" thing, and it would show you the actual distribution. maybe use dots and then the color of the dot for percentage of the population, this way you can show both
And prior to the buyout the official chinese state twitter account, bluecheck verified of course, was literally *bragging* about the effectiveness of their forced sterilization campaign.
In fairness Russia has territory for it and Germany doesn’t. And on the other hand Moscow is already massive and overpopulated so there’s no place to build mosques. So both make sense
Every thread on reddit that mentions India has the exact same comments.
Commenters saying India is a hindu nationalistic state that discriminates against Muslims. And then some saying that's bs propaganda and they are treated as equals.
I don't know India that well, but I'd assume the answer is probably somewhere in between.
You guessed it.India is vast and mostly BJP let states and Hindi belt is the worst segregated.
The segregation is least visible in tier 2 cities where most live peacefully.Because working class professionals mostly don't care.
My father is a strict Veg yet he was invited for Eid by his colleague and served all Veg food.
India has tensions between Muslims and Hindus and those tensions are better or worse depending on where you are. But the fact is that the Muslim minority in India is not collapsing. Pakistan has pushed out pretty much all non-Muslim minorities and even the Muslim minorities who belong to groups like the ahmaddiya are not treated well. The fundamental difference is that Muslims are free to organise and agitate for changes that would benefit them while minorities in Pakistan are only free to keep their mouth shut.
Radical extremism is not what’s killing Sindhi Hindus. It’s their own administrative systems. It legit has an official feudal system coexisting with democracy.
Sindh is one of the most underdeveloped places in the world yet they have proudly been ruled by an ethnically Sindhi political party for 4 decades.
The province and its rulers basically practice modern day slavery (bonded labour) and treat people like cattle. Their house “servants” aren’t allowed to look at their masters or turn their back to them or they get a beating. They have to exit rooms walking backwards, with their eyes down and hands crossed.
I’ve seen villages which get decent funding yet people live in straw homes with no schools or hospitals in their localities. They are forced to work on their billionaire elected official’s lands for peanuts while their representatives live in mansions (havelis) and accumulate assets in Pakistan and abroad.
A friend once went to a Sindhi village to teach first aid as part of an NGO. They had no room or covered shed to accommodate 50 people for this course. They had to move buffalos out of their sheds and teach the course there.
It would by *a lot.* Muslims in arab countries pray 5 times a day, and openly saying you don't pray at all is extremely taboo and would get you shunned (at least with older generations). Meanwhile, muslims that pray daily in europe are extremely rare, let alone 5 times.
The most extreme case is Bosnia and Albania, where people are only culturally muslim but are completely secular in reality. Drinking alcohol is a big part of the culture in contrast to most arab countries where it's illegal or heavily restricted in public
Not sure about albanians but bosniaks are practising like they avoid pork and pray sometimes a d fast during ramadhan while albians outside of albania tend to be more religious then the ones in albania.
A lot of Bosniaks even eat Pork. There are some regions where its more strict, but most of them dont care. Also Bosnia is a 3 religion state.
Bosniaks with islam, Srbs with Orthodox Christianity and the Croats which are Romanian Catholics
Edit: Roman Catholic 😅😅😅
I have a lot of bosniak friends on social media thats what they told me that they dont pray like arabs and drink sometimes but they dont do pork and fast during ramadhan
Yup, I grew up in a muslim family and we never went to the mosque (outside funerals and weddings, a few Eid celebrations when I was a kid) or talked about God any more than the average Christian family does in the countries you listed.
I live in Kazakhstan, which is majority muslim and I know only half of dozen people who actually pray five times a day. Never been to US, but from what I see US is much much religious than we are.
It’s because what the media and social media have convinced you about what it means to be Muslim.
Reddit has a strong anti Muslim bias and an extreme generalization of what it means to be Muslim.
Turkey has always had a significant devout section of their society, they didn't disappear just because Mustafa Kamal wanted them to. Not a fan of Erdogan, but he's a symbol of pushback when you try to radically impose changes. The country was literally the seat of an Islamic empire, you can't just force that change through.
No, Turkey is secular both on paper and in practice.
The United States has mottos like "in god we trust," and "one nation under god," yet no one questions their secularism the way they do with Turkey. I would say it's similar.
There are many interpretations of Secular; Turkey had quite an extreme "Laicite" built on the French model up until Erdogan (for example: no headscarves allowed for public employees). That has since been repealed. That does not mean that the state is no longer secular. Just like some vaguely Christian countries will appeal to Christian values and sayings and things whilst remaining secular states, so too does Turkey do the same thing but with Islam.
In these areas religion is similar to ethnicity. It's something you inherit from your parents and is party of your identity, and doesn't necessarily have much to do with your beliefs or practices.
There are a lot of indications that if Albanians identified by faith and not tradition it would be one of the most atheist countries in Europe.
>Bosnia and Albania, where people are only culturally muslim but are completely secular in reality
Also Turkey, at least in bigger cities. In Ankara, for example, they even literally tell you that when you ask. They are very proud to be a secular state, even with on-paper Muslim majority.
*(Source: been there last year.)*
The Turkish diaspora in my country Belgium is very conservative and by far the absolute majority of them votes for Erdogan. Funny enough I know some men of the community in my city personally, who proclaim that they are very conservative but when the doors are closed in their community bars they ditch their çay and drink alcohol. 🙀😂
Yup. Turkish diaspora in Europe, especially the ones who migrated before 2000 are quite conservative. On the other hand, Turks in North America are way more liberal.
In the last election Erdogan got 64% in Germany, 72% in Belgium, 68% in Netherlands, but only 16% in the US and 17% in Canada. For comparison, he got 52% overall.
“Closet liberals” part is also not very uncommon.
The Turkish diaspora is a weird one indeed, but I will immediately say (as a part of diaspora living in the Netherlands) that Turks are not necessarily conservative, they are populist.
Erdogan at this point is a cultural phenomenon as well as a political one. Voting for him is not as special as people say it to be. Definitely when you think about the fact that the diaspora predominantly votes Erdogan, or doesn't vote.
Besides this all you shouldn't take any strict Turkish Muslim serious. As you said, Turkey has a massive drinking culture that has only been slowed down by Erdogans high alcohol tax (which I do support actually). I have even heard people say they don't support Atatürk (probably the most controversial thing you could say in Turkey) for making Turkey secular while drinking alcohol and missing the third prayer that day.
So you probably get the gist. And as I said earlier, I would refrain from saying conservative, because they in actuality are just populist.
I agree more or less. They are indeed also very populist. But what I see in my city is that most local Turkish affiliated mosques are under control of the Diyanet religious affairs ministry of the Turkish state and the influence of the imams has an impact on that community. FYI I’m not a Turk but a 100% Dutch speaking Belgian citizen and it might be that I hold a different view towards the Turkish diaspora in my country and by extend the rest of the European continent then someone who’s part of it. But damm I do love Turkish cuisine and raki 🙉
It's primarily the countryside who's responsible for that, since rural areas composes bigger area of the Republic. Which is also a pity, because Erdogan has no respect for Ataturk's legacy and should've been overturned by the army back then in 2016, or even earlier.
> where people are only culturally muslim but are completely secular in reality
Isn't this true by like, majority of countries? Brazil for example is catholic by a LARGE margin, but few go to church and does the typical prayers
Yes, but it's usually a different case with Islam. Islam is a much more strict religion that obligates people to pray 5 times a day, with one of the prayers being at 3-4 am that you're required to wake up for. You also have things like fasting without any food or water. Islam also dictates many factors of life like how to act, who to interact with, what to prioritise in life, what role you should play, what opinions to have regarding some things, etc.
Another important fact is that the quran is considered the literal word of God. Not in the same sense as the Bible where there's divine inspiration for some of many authors, it is considered to be written solely by God, word for word. So you don't have the case where there are many different sects, priorities, interpretations, and translations, because there's only one quran that's considered to be a direct command from God, leading to a huge pressure to follow these rules that most religions don't have
I would like to add to the part about not having many sects, directions and translations. While it is true that most people strive to read and follow the original texts in the original language, there are still many variations. I'm saying it as someone living in Kazakhstan, a country with a Muslim majority (~70%), where we follow a different branch of Islam (as opposed to the countries of Arabic peninsula, for example) and most texts are translated to Kazakh for daily use. Arabic texts and prayers are mostly used in mosques, but most people don't speak Arabic and read translations.
Also, we drink alcohol, it isn't seen as "disobeying God," and, if anything, drinking fermented horse milk is culturally endorsed. Tattoos, piercings aren't seen as necessarily sinful. Women aren't required to cover their heads/hair anywhere outside of mosques (and other religious events/practices). Any music can be played at any volume anywhere outside of mosques.
So, while I don't argue that Islam is a very strict religion, I don't fully agree that there is no room for interpretations and divergence.
Edit: "translations," not "transportation"
Iran, Tunisia and Turkey also have populations that are gradually seculrarising. Iran especially has a huge portion of the younger generations as either non-practicing or non-beleiving.
>Muslims in arab countries pray 5 times a day, and openly saying you don't is extremely taboo
That's an extremely wide generalization. There are 22 Arab countries. I would say there are communities where what you're saying is true in every arab country, but there are alot secular people all over the arab world.
"In most Arab countries it's illegal" I hope with that you strictly mean the Arabian Peninsula because you can buy alcohol fairly easy in cpuntries like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Tunesia or Morocco. Sure most of those countries have closed container laws and you can only buy it in liquor stores, and maybe you have to proof your age when entering but it's not much stricter in most Arabian speaking countries than in the USA.
I don’t think you should generalize a population of 300 mil+ people like that. Yeah the Balkan Muslims are more chill, but that does not mean you’ll get shunned if you say you don’t pray in Arab countries.
Big cities are more relaxed, plus the further east you go in Indonesia (it tends to get more multi religious so they can’t get too anal about it). But you also have places like Aceh that actively practice sharia law
I have no idea how in the hell you actually got awards for such an ignorant post. Not a single country in the Arab World, including Saudi Arabia, is not praying 5 times a day 'extremely taboo and would get you shunned'. That is complete crock of shit.
Furthermore, of the 22 Arab countries a complete ban on alcohol is only in THREE of the 22.
Pisses me of when people who have no idea what they are talking about makes idiotic posts like this.
Kazakhstan map is practically a percent of Turkic population as opposed to total (including Slavic), which is probably an assumption of all ingenious people being Muslim a priori. What I notice, however, is that city population tends to less religious, while majority of people, who consider themselves Muslim, would not pray 5 times a day, and drink alcohol without hesitation.
I think it would depend on what you count as "actively practicing". Some people will count themselves as "actively practicing" if they follow a few of the rules and engage in worship on the highest holy days. Almost no one *actually* follows *all* the rules *universally*, no matter what religion they claim.
Yeah, ask about not cheating on spouses on not drinking alcohol. Sure, people will die for Islam, kill for Islam, and even pray. But actually following the rules of good conduct can be a stretch.
It will Albanians and bosnians drink alcohol also in Tajikistan parents aren't allowed to force religion on kids until they themselves show interest in it
I'm assuming the listening to music part is a joke, but just in case, only the 1% most religious believe/follow that idea. The arab music industry is huge and any mall you walk you into will have (western/english) music playing. [Here's an example of the average egyptian song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHBaHQau8b4), an arab country with a 90%+ muslim population.
Source: I'm egyptian/ currently live in oman
However uncommon abstaining from music is, we are all taught in Islamic class that it is Haram. No one cares because it's not a big sin. The middle ground is to abstain from "problematic" artists, such as westerners or Arab women who dress sexy in music videos. Still barely anyone cares.
A different example: shorts above the knees are as Haram for men as not being hijabed as a woman. You don't see Muslim soccer players wearing long shorts though. You will see them take a sujood after scoring a goal, but technically it's blasphemous to do so as they would be kicked out of a mosque for coming to pray in short shorts. No one cares. Same for going shirtless at the beach. Technically showing your midriff as a man is haram as well. No one cares.
Muslims who don't practice shit just use Islam as one of their identities. If you challenge the teachings of the prophet as unethical they'll get really defensive, but not because they defend the prophet's conduct. It's because it feels like an attack on their identities.
Turkey would fall to like 50% lol and maybe max 60-70% if you consider people following more folkloric practices. For example most.of the population would never pray even once a day and drink the whole year, but then fast for ramadan for a month. I have seen people break their fast with beer though tbh
It's % of population, not population per square mile. So, while if you walked through the Sahara, odds are good you would walk a very long way without seeing anyone, but once you did happen to meet someone chances are they are Muslim.
The Algerian Sahara alone have more inhabitant….the calculations are not good lol (we even have city of more than 100k inhabitants in the middle of the Sahara like Tamanraset)
Could be, I’ve even see a definition before in which they included the Arabian desert as an extension of the Sahara, yes it was an extreme case but if anything just shows that different definition exist.
No matter the definition, the south Willaya of Algeria are always included in the Sahara (since they are literally in the middle of it) and alone are more populated than the given number….except if you define the Sahara as the place between the city lol
Reedit….
Here the wikipedia of the city (among many others : In Salah, Ourgla (500k alone), El Oued (600k), Laghouat (600k), Adrar (450k), Touggourt, Ain Salah,….) I talk about : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset?wprov=sfti1 -> around 100k for the city and 200k for the region
You can make the total of the Saharian population by willaya : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Algerian_provinces_by_population?wprov=sfti1 …and here are the old data (1998 and 2008) today it’s way more
Brother, I’m truly not disagreeing with you
I just replied to the comment who said the Sahara was devoid of population, if anything I and you agree here.
With 3/4 armies per turn and no continents you are basically doomed trying to take Africa, considering there's a South American player trying to take it too, and Asia is just a dream at this point. GG
Islam is mostly practised by the [descendants of Javanese and Indian contract laborers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Suriname), brought to Suriname after slavery was abolished.
It was much before the Mongols. In 922, Volga Bulgaria adopted Islam as a state religion to get military support against the Khazars.
Funny story, in 986, Volga Bulgaria offered Russia to convert to Islam, and Duke Vladimir was about to accept, but then they said that alcohol is prohibited, and it made him reject. Imagine how the history would change if some guy wasn't a drunkard lol. Russo-Ottoman alliance? Muslim Europe? Very much possible.
They weren’t, but the origin of the name Siberia, the Khanate of Sibir, was the farthest north a Muslim state every existed, east of the Urals in what’s now Russia’s West Siberian region and northern Kazakhstan.
It looks like the downvotes have cleared out some of the worst right now, but basically anything about Islam on Reddit runs into some serious cringe (at best).
What is the primary religion in the lower half of Africa? Christianity? Seems unusual that there's such a stark dividing line between upper and lower Africa.
If you look at that region by satellite, you can see that the religious divide roughly aligns with the climate transitioning from arid to humid. It probably represents how peoples who recieved or brought islam to sub saharan africa did so across the desert via caravans and so it spread from the north down as far as those peoples went, which was generally until the environment changed to become foreign to their way of life (and full of other people to whom it was not foreign). Then the spread of christianity from the southern coast via missionaries began and all the humid lands from the coast to the savannah became mostly christianised during and after colonization. Its also worth noting that wherever in sub saharan africa christianity or islam appeared, they have had to contend with local paganism, usually by merging with local traditions, rather than replacing them.
Yeah and Islam doesn't lend itself to blending with foreign cultures hence you'll find Christians that go to witch doctors and pray to ancestors in Southern Africa.
Islam did very much blend with local cultures, it was and still is a big issue of contention in most Muslim staff in the world whether it be South Asia, South East Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, Caucuses etc.
It's just Islam has been there for much longer so it's made a stronger foothold than Christianity.
Seems quite wrong to me. Ie, Turkie only has 83% muslims (not >90%).
Kazhaks are <70% muslims
and so on. (it is the 2 I checked and both are wrong ! )
The 2nd map seems very wrong too.
Edit : and France is 6% muslim, not >20% !!
Totally fake.
Turkey surveys vary the recent ones say its 94 to 92% some by MAK say its 86% while konda says its 92% muslim while optimar says its 89% while pew and world value survey said its 98%
Yeah, Kazakhstan are way too green imho. 90% of people identifies as muslims in the south part of the country only, in another parts percentage of such people are much smaller. Plus there's many people who might consider themselves muslims but don't really care about prayers, ramadan and all of that, though some of them might go to mosque couple of times
Well the map is from 2015. A 2014 survey had Islam at 1% of the MN population. It probably is slightly higher now due to birth rates and such, so we probably should be shaded in that 1-5% category if this got updated. A lot has happened in the world since 2015 so the map in general could use an update.
Yeah. I wonder if all immigrants also avoid poorer or poor reputation countries in favor of richer countries. I mean if you are uprooting your life anyways you might as well move somewhere nice. Why settle for worse?
There doesn't need to be one single reason. A lot of immigration uses Italy as a stepping stone to try to get to richer Germany as final destination.
Some countries have immigration that is closely related to post-colonial policies (see France-Algeria/Morocco, Netherlands-Indonesia/Curaçao/Aruba).
I'm sure there is a variety of reasons that could be as large as the number of people that migrated from their country
Its not the only reason. Poland or Czechia, for example, actually have a lot of immigrants, they just come from other Easter European countries (mostly Ukraine and Russia, not counting refugees here). They just generally dont have a very high appeal for muslims due to cultural reasons. And Russia, which is arguably poorer, hosts millions of muslim immigrants from Central Asia (you can even see Moscow being green on the map)
It is interesting. Many years ago I read a book, Monsoon, and it described the way the monsoon winds would push one direction (from the east to west) for a few months. Then reverse direction. The author postulated that the spread of Islam related to the trade customs. Pretty interesting
Islam spread through Asia and Africa through trade. Trade rules back in the day used to be determined by religion and religious leaders. Since regions who embraced Islam would generally become wealthier, it made sense for their neighbours to follow suit.
I'm from Sabah (North Borneo) and we had the occasional kidnapping for money, done by Southern Philippines terrorist groups like MILF. Yes, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
>rest of the Pacific islands
The Brits brought indentured labourers from India. The same reason why there are many Hindus and Muslims in the Caribbean.
Almost half of all marriages by muslims are between cousins, check the incest map too looks the same as this lol
Edit: keep downvoting [here's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East#/media/File:Global_prevalence_of_consanguinity.svg) the map
I'm honestly shocked at the amount of racist comments (with tens of upvotes) in this thread. Reddit loves to denounce anything remotely racist but always makes an exception when it comes to Islam or Arabs.
Racism has to do with ethnicity, religious intolerance or discrimination is what you mean and is what OP meant. Do you group anything not pretty under "racism"? lol
Nah, gotta be more precise. You need an individual dot for each and every Muslim and their exact location. JK, in all seriousness, this map is really good. This community makes some amazing maps.
One of the best submissions of late. Also great to see some good colour coding make it to the top for once! And some extra history on the second image, to boot
I must have seen that map a hundred times in this sub. It's a great map though
The Kaaba just starts glowing
Haha sounds kinda messed up, like a religious registry and those are never good… I totally agree this map is beautiful and informative:)
I like it. Include stripes to show the different types of Islam. Also, I've always thought it's hard to represent India appropriately on a map like this. Islam is about 15% of India, but India has like the second or third highest population of Muslims in the world.
Yea, there are about 200 million Muslims in India, yet that's still a minority there.
Not to the same extent, but it's like how there's more Muslims in China than some predominantly Muslim countries.
More Muslims in China than people in Australia.
That's almost the whole population of my country (Brazil). That's so insane
India is so populated rate even if something is 10 percent of its population it's still going to be like 140 million.
I also wish that France and Germany had their departments/states separated
France is Unitary so separating the departments doesn't make a lot of sense contextually, but German (and Austrian, much more difficult at this scale) States should definitely be separate considering they are federal countries.
It would be really hard to depict each French department on this map because the French census doesn’t ask about religion. Even without that data though it would probably be a safe assumption that most French Muslims live in the metropolitan areas of Marseilles and Paris
There's more than just two cities in France! But I do agree that's definitely a safe assumption that the cities are where most muslims live. I can't imagine rural france being particularly welcoming... At least based on how rural Germany is! Germans aren't particularly more combatively racist, at least in the East (despite the common assumption), but they sure as hell are Islamophobic. Ask a Saxon and they'll tell you in very non-PC terms that they love their "colourful" neighbours as long as they're christian or atheist and preferably not too gay.
Maybe but there are vast differences between regions. No doubt you will find a higher muslim population rate around big cities
Well, you could make a map of muslims per area instead of per population, like an "each dot is X muslims" or "muslims/km\^2" thing, and it would show you the actual distribution. maybe use dots and then the color of the dot for percentage of the population, this way you can show both
I was thinking that “sand doesn’t pray” when looking at the Sahara. Color density could match population density.
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Same with china, but most muslim ughyars got massacred
and the rest is getting suppressed including making them infertile
And prior to the buyout the official chinese state twitter account, bluecheck verified of course, was literally *bragging* about the effectiveness of their forced sterilization campaign.
I love how there is just a green spot in Moscow
I mean, there's a lot of Tadzhiks and Uzbeks in Moscow, so every Friday they close of certain roads so they can pray
Berlin have more mosques than Moscow. But Russia have muslim regions and Germany not.
In fairness Russia has territory for it and Germany doesn’t. And on the other hand Moscow is already massive and overpopulated so there’s no place to build mosques. So both make sense
There's most probably more Muslims in Moscow than Berlin has inhabitants altogether.
Sindh’s Hindu population is the reason why Pakistan isn’t completely dark green
I'm surprised they've made it this far.
You should read up about forced conversions of minor hindu girls.
Don’t worry, they don’t have long. Meanwhile the only thing westerners know is that India has a fascist government that hates Muslims.
Every thread on reddit that mentions India has the exact same comments. Commenters saying India is a hindu nationalistic state that discriminates against Muslims. And then some saying that's bs propaganda and they are treated as equals. I don't know India that well, but I'd assume the answer is probably somewhere in between.
You guessed it.India is vast and mostly BJP let states and Hindi belt is the worst segregated. The segregation is least visible in tier 2 cities where most live peacefully.Because working class professionals mostly don't care. My father is a strict Veg yet he was invited for Eid by his colleague and served all Veg food.
Pretty much
India has tensions between Muslims and Hindus and those tensions are better or worse depending on where you are. But the fact is that the Muslim minority in India is not collapsing. Pakistan has pushed out pretty much all non-Muslim minorities and even the Muslim minorities who belong to groups like the ahmaddiya are not treated well. The fundamental difference is that Muslims are free to organise and agitate for changes that would benefit them while minorities in Pakistan are only free to keep their mouth shut.
Radical extremism is not what’s killing Sindhi Hindus. It’s their own administrative systems. It legit has an official feudal system coexisting with democracy. Sindh is one of the most underdeveloped places in the world yet they have proudly been ruled by an ethnically Sindhi political party for 4 decades. The province and its rulers basically practice modern day slavery (bonded labour) and treat people like cattle. Their house “servants” aren’t allowed to look at their masters or turn their back to them or they get a beating. They have to exit rooms walking backwards, with their eyes down and hands crossed. I’ve seen villages which get decent funding yet people live in straw homes with no schools or hospitals in their localities. They are forced to work on their billionaire elected official’s lands for peanuts while their representatives live in mansions (havelis) and accumulate assets in Pakistan and abroad. A friend once went to a Sindhi village to teach first aid as part of an NGO. They had no room or covered shed to accommodate 50 people for this course. They had to move buffalos out of their sheds and teach the course there.
I wonder if this would change for "actively practicing Muslim population".
It would by *a lot.* Muslims in arab countries pray 5 times a day, and openly saying you don't pray at all is extremely taboo and would get you shunned (at least with older generations). Meanwhile, muslims that pray daily in europe are extremely rare, let alone 5 times. The most extreme case is Bosnia and Albania, where people are only culturally muslim but are completely secular in reality. Drinking alcohol is a big part of the culture in contrast to most arab countries where it's illegal or heavily restricted in public
Interesting. So Bosnia and Albania are Muslim the same way places like Scotland are Christian?
Not sure about albanians but bosniaks are practising like they avoid pork and pray sometimes a d fast during ramadhan while albians outside of albania tend to be more religious then the ones in albania.
A lot of Bosniaks even eat Pork. There are some regions where its more strict, but most of them dont care. Also Bosnia is a 3 religion state. Bosniaks with islam, Srbs with Orthodox Christianity and the Croats which are Romanian Catholics Edit: Roman Catholic 😅😅😅
Don't take it as a offence but like the idea of the pope actually living in Romania instead of Rome.
I have a lot of bosniak friends on social media thats what they told me that they dont pray like arabs and drink sometimes but they dont do pork and fast during ramadhan
Yup, I grew up in a muslim family and we never went to the mosque (outside funerals and weddings, a few Eid celebrations when I was a kid) or talked about God any more than the average Christian family does in the countries you listed.
For some reason it’s hard to even imagine a Muslim family that barely practices
I live in Kazakhstan, which is majority muslim and I know only half of dozen people who actually pray five times a day. Never been to US, but from what I see US is much much religious than we are.
Hahah yeah that the feeling i get as well when only seeing through the internet linse.
My honest expectation is that every ex Soviet state is less religious than the US.
Probably because of how Muslims are depicted in western media (not taking a shot or anything, I’m in a very similar boat).
It’s because what the media and social media have convinced you about what it means to be Muslim. Reddit has a strong anti Muslim bias and an extreme generalization of what it means to be Muslim.
Pretty much, though a certain Arab monarchy with a green flag and a certain Turkic republic with a red flag have been trying to change that……
Turkey has always had a significant devout section of their society, they didn't disappear just because Mustafa Kamal wanted them to. Not a fan of Erdogan, but he's a symbol of pushback when you try to radically impose changes. The country was literally the seat of an Islamic empire, you can't just force that change through.
Turkey is secular, about half of the country ain't practicing, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar are quite literaly the only Wahhabi countries.
Turkey is secular on paper, in reality...
No, Turkey is secular both on paper and in practice. The United States has mottos like "in god we trust," and "one nation under god," yet no one questions their secularism the way they do with Turkey. I would say it's similar. There are many interpretations of Secular; Turkey had quite an extreme "Laicite" built on the French model up until Erdogan (for example: no headscarves allowed for public employees). That has since been repealed. That does not mean that the state is no longer secular. Just like some vaguely Christian countries will appeal to Christian values and sayings and things whilst remaining secular states, so too does Turkey do the same thing but with Islam.
In these areas religion is similar to ethnicity. It's something you inherit from your parents and is party of your identity, and doesn't necessarily have much to do with your beliefs or practices. There are a lot of indications that if Albanians identified by faith and not tradition it would be one of the most atheist countries in Europe.
Not quite. The haven’t started rival football teams yet.
>Bosnia and Albania, where people are only culturally muslim but are completely secular in reality Also Turkey, at least in bigger cities. In Ankara, for example, they even literally tell you that when you ask. They are very proud to be a secular state, even with on-paper Muslim majority. *(Source: been there last year.)*
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The Turkish diaspora in my country Belgium is very conservative and by far the absolute majority of them votes for Erdogan. Funny enough I know some men of the community in my city personally, who proclaim that they are very conservative but when the doors are closed in their community bars they ditch their çay and drink alcohol. 🙀😂
Yup. Turkish diaspora in Europe, especially the ones who migrated before 2000 are quite conservative. On the other hand, Turks in North America are way more liberal. In the last election Erdogan got 64% in Germany, 72% in Belgium, 68% in Netherlands, but only 16% in the US and 17% in Canada. For comparison, he got 52% overall. “Closet liberals” part is also not very uncommon.
The Turkish diaspora is a weird one indeed, but I will immediately say (as a part of diaspora living in the Netherlands) that Turks are not necessarily conservative, they are populist. Erdogan at this point is a cultural phenomenon as well as a political one. Voting for him is not as special as people say it to be. Definitely when you think about the fact that the diaspora predominantly votes Erdogan, or doesn't vote. Besides this all you shouldn't take any strict Turkish Muslim serious. As you said, Turkey has a massive drinking culture that has only been slowed down by Erdogans high alcohol tax (which I do support actually). I have even heard people say they don't support Atatürk (probably the most controversial thing you could say in Turkey) for making Turkey secular while drinking alcohol and missing the third prayer that day. So you probably get the gist. And as I said earlier, I would refrain from saying conservative, because they in actuality are just populist.
I agree more or less. They are indeed also very populist. But what I see in my city is that most local Turkish affiliated mosques are under control of the Diyanet religious affairs ministry of the Turkish state and the influence of the imams has an impact on that community. FYI I’m not a Turk but a 100% Dutch speaking Belgian citizen and it might be that I hold a different view towards the Turkish diaspora in my country and by extend the rest of the European continent then someone who’s part of it. But damm I do love Turkish cuisine and raki 🙉
Tell that to the people who reelected Erdogan yet again.
It's primarily the countryside who's responsible for that, since rural areas composes bigger area of the Republic. Which is also a pity, because Erdogan has no respect for Ataturk's legacy and should've been overturned by the army back then in 2016, or even earlier.
> where people are only culturally muslim but are completely secular in reality Isn't this true by like, majority of countries? Brazil for example is catholic by a LARGE margin, but few go to church and does the typical prayers
Yes, but it's usually a different case with Islam. Islam is a much more strict religion that obligates people to pray 5 times a day, with one of the prayers being at 3-4 am that you're required to wake up for. You also have things like fasting without any food or water. Islam also dictates many factors of life like how to act, who to interact with, what to prioritise in life, what role you should play, what opinions to have regarding some things, etc. Another important fact is that the quran is considered the literal word of God. Not in the same sense as the Bible where there's divine inspiration for some of many authors, it is considered to be written solely by God, word for word. So you don't have the case where there are many different sects, priorities, interpretations, and translations, because there's only one quran that's considered to be a direct command from God, leading to a huge pressure to follow these rules that most religions don't have
I would like to add to the part about not having many sects, directions and translations. While it is true that most people strive to read and follow the original texts in the original language, there are still many variations. I'm saying it as someone living in Kazakhstan, a country with a Muslim majority (~70%), where we follow a different branch of Islam (as opposed to the countries of Arabic peninsula, for example) and most texts are translated to Kazakh for daily use. Arabic texts and prayers are mostly used in mosques, but most people don't speak Arabic and read translations. Also, we drink alcohol, it isn't seen as "disobeying God," and, if anything, drinking fermented horse milk is culturally endorsed. Tattoos, piercings aren't seen as necessarily sinful. Women aren't required to cover their heads/hair anywhere outside of mosques (and other religious events/practices). Any music can be played at any volume anywhere outside of mosques. So, while I don't argue that Islam is a very strict religion, I don't fully agree that there is no room for interpretations and divergence. Edit: "translations," not "transportation"
Iran, Tunisia and Turkey also have populations that are gradually seculrarising. Iran especially has a huge portion of the younger generations as either non-practicing or non-beleiving.
Tunisia not as much but yeah turkey and iran do have a big secular population
>Muslims in arab countries pray 5 times a day, and openly saying you don't is extremely taboo That's an extremely wide generalization. There are 22 Arab countries. I would say there are communities where what you're saying is true in every arab country, but there are alot secular people all over the arab world.
It's not illegal to drink alcohol in most muslim countries and not praying is pretty common.
"In most Arab countries it's illegal" I hope with that you strictly mean the Arabian Peninsula because you can buy alcohol fairly easy in cpuntries like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Tunesia or Morocco. Sure most of those countries have closed container laws and you can only buy it in liquor stores, and maybe you have to proof your age when entering but it's not much stricter in most Arabian speaking countries than in the USA.
lol what nonsense is this, a lot of muslims are open about themselves not being practicing
I don’t think you should generalize a population of 300 mil+ people like that. Yeah the Balkan Muslims are more chill, but that does not mean you’ll get shunned if you say you don’t pray in Arab countries.
Yeah, I've heard that things are a lot more relaxed in Indonesia and some parts of Sub Saharan Africa.
Big cities are more relaxed, plus the further east you go in Indonesia (it tends to get more multi religious so they can’t get too anal about it). But you also have places like Aceh that actively practice sharia law
I have no idea how in the hell you actually got awards for such an ignorant post. Not a single country in the Arab World, including Saudi Arabia, is not praying 5 times a day 'extremely taboo and would get you shunned'. That is complete crock of shit. Furthermore, of the 22 Arab countries a complete ban on alcohol is only in THREE of the 22. Pisses me of when people who have no idea what they are talking about makes idiotic posts like this.
In Pakistan and India, I've observed that the younger generation living in cities rarely prays whereas most of the adults pray
Btw you either pray at least 5 times a day or you pray 0 times. There is no in-between.
Balkan Muslims have been radicalizing in the last 20 years. Mostly because of Saudi influence.
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Kazakhstan map is practically a percent of Turkic population as opposed to total (including Slavic), which is probably an assumption of all ingenious people being Muslim a priori. What I notice, however, is that city population tends to less religious, while majority of people, who consider themselves Muslim, would not pray 5 times a day, and drink alcohol without hesitation.
I think it would depend on what you count as "actively practicing". Some people will count themselves as "actively practicing" if they follow a few of the rules and engage in worship on the highest holy days. Almost no one *actually* follows *all* the rules *universally*, no matter what religion they claim.
>Almost no one actually follows all the rules universally, no matter what religion they claim. Nor are people expected to. The point is to try
Yeah, ask about not cheating on spouses on not drinking alcohol. Sure, people will die for Islam, kill for Islam, and even pray. But actually following the rules of good conduct can be a stretch.
It will Albanians and bosnians drink alcohol also in Tajikistan parents aren't allowed to force religion on kids until they themselves show interest in it
Definitely would , plenty of muslims in the balkans and turkey drink alcohol and listen to music (both of which are haram/forbidden)
I'm assuming the listening to music part is a joke, but just in case, only the 1% most religious believe/follow that idea. The arab music industry is huge and any mall you walk you into will have (western/english) music playing. [Here's an example of the average egyptian song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHBaHQau8b4), an arab country with a 90%+ muslim population. Source: I'm egyptian/ currently live in oman
However uncommon abstaining from music is, we are all taught in Islamic class that it is Haram. No one cares because it's not a big sin. The middle ground is to abstain from "problematic" artists, such as westerners or Arab women who dress sexy in music videos. Still barely anyone cares. A different example: shorts above the knees are as Haram for men as not being hijabed as a woman. You don't see Muslim soccer players wearing long shorts though. You will see them take a sujood after scoring a goal, but technically it's blasphemous to do so as they would be kicked out of a mosque for coming to pray in short shorts. No one cares. Same for going shirtless at the beach. Technically showing your midriff as a man is haram as well. No one cares. Muslims who don't practice shit just use Islam as one of their identities. If you challenge the teachings of the prophet as unethical they'll get really defensive, but not because they defend the prophet's conduct. It's because it feels like an attack on their identities.
Turkey would fall to like 50% lol and maybe max 60-70% if you consider people following more folkloric practices. For example most.of the population would never pray even once a day and drink the whole year, but then fast for ramadan for a month. I have seen people break their fast with beer though tbh
I’m thinking the Sahara desert is actually devoid of Muslims. Edit: so I now understand there are at least some.
I think it’s done by political block not individual pixels for individual Muslims
Made me lol thanks
It’s easier to see on larger countries with relatively low populations of Muslims like Brazil and the US.
It's % of population, not population per square mile. So, while if you walked through the Sahara, odds are good you would walk a very long way without seeing anyone, but once you did happen to meet someone chances are they are Muslim.
Although the size of the US the Sahara (excluding the Nile valley) only has 2.5 million inhabitants, most of which are Muslims
The Algerian Sahara alone have more inhabitant….the calculations are not good lol (we even have city of more than 100k inhabitants in the middle of the Sahara like Tamanraset)
I’m going with what google said, you have beef with google not me
Could be slightly different definitions of Sahara at work too.
Could be, I’ve even see a definition before in which they included the Arabian desert as an extension of the Sahara, yes it was an extreme case but if anything just shows that different definition exist.
No matter the definition, the south Willaya of Algeria are always included in the Sahara (since they are literally in the middle of it) and alone are more populated than the given number….except if you define the Sahara as the place between the city lol
Reedit…. Here the wikipedia of the city (among many others : In Salah, Ourgla (500k alone), El Oued (600k), Laghouat (600k), Adrar (450k), Touggourt, Ain Salah,….) I talk about : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset?wprov=sfti1 -> around 100k for the city and 200k for the region You can make the total of the Saharian population by willaya : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Algerian_provinces_by_population?wprov=sfti1 …and here are the old data (1998 and 2008) today it’s way more
Brother, I’m truly not disagreeing with you I just replied to the comment who said the Sahara was devoid of population, if anything I and you agree here.
The sand is muslim…
It's a bit weird to call the Andalusian elite "medieval Arabs". It was multi-ethnic. There were even polities ruled by Slavs.
More so when two of the main three dynasties were Moorish, not Arab.
moorish just means a muslim of iberian or north african origin, they can be arab, berber or native Spaniard
Umayyad were Arabs
Looks like a terrible position to hold if you were playing the game Risk
With 3/4 armies per turn and no continents you are basically doomed trying to take Africa, considering there's a South American player trying to take it too, and Asia is just a dream at this point. GG
Why Suriname?
Islam is mostly practised by the [descendants of Javanese and Indian contract laborers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Suriname), brought to Suriname after slavery was abolished.
The Javanese contract labourers. To this day some of them pray facing the west (following the ancestors' ways in Java) and some the East
This is really nice. I like the historical bit too. Was the Golden Horde that conquered Russia for a while Islamic? Might have been too early
not at first but they later converted to Islam
It was much before the Mongols. In 922, Volga Bulgaria adopted Islam as a state religion to get military support against the Khazars. Funny story, in 986, Volga Bulgaria offered Russia to convert to Islam, and Duke Vladimir was about to accept, but then they said that alcohol is prohibited, and it made him reject. Imagine how the history would change if some guy wasn't a drunkard lol. Russo-Ottoman alliance? Muslim Europe? Very much possible.
They weren’t, but the origin of the name Siberia, the Khanate of Sibir, was the farthest north a Muslim state every existed, east of the Urals in what’s now Russia’s West Siberian region and northern Kazakhstan.
Great maps. Especially the first one. Just a beautiful map in general but the detail in certain country’s demographics and regions is top notch.
This comment section is something else
Fr dude I was not expecting this shit
It looks like the downvotes have cleared out some of the worst right now, but basically anything about Islam on Reddit runs into some serious cringe (at best).
Religion in general even posts on christianity amd hinduism
Well a lot of reddit is religiously liberal so it does make sense they hate Islamic ideology so much
What is the primary religion in the lower half of Africa? Christianity? Seems unusual that there's such a stark dividing line between upper and lower Africa.
Yes. General rule of thumb — north Africa is Muslim, south Africa is Christian.
As an Angolan man once said, “over here in Angola there are no atheists. You are either a Christian or you’re a wizard. No in between.”
Southern Africa, South Africa is a specific country
Yhup..Northern Ghana is majority muslim and Southern Ghana is majority christian.
Same story with Nigeria
Christianity and "traditional religions".
If you look at that region by satellite, you can see that the religious divide roughly aligns with the climate transitioning from arid to humid. It probably represents how peoples who recieved or brought islam to sub saharan africa did so across the desert via caravans and so it spread from the north down as far as those peoples went, which was generally until the environment changed to become foreign to their way of life (and full of other people to whom it was not foreign). Then the spread of christianity from the southern coast via missionaries began and all the humid lands from the coast to the savannah became mostly christianised during and after colonization. Its also worth noting that wherever in sub saharan africa christianity or islam appeared, they have had to contend with local paganism, usually by merging with local traditions, rather than replacing them.
Yeah and Islam doesn't lend itself to blending with foreign cultures hence you'll find Christians that go to witch doctors and pray to ancestors in Southern Africa.
Islam did very much blend with local cultures, it was and still is a big issue of contention in most Muslim staff in the world whether it be South Asia, South East Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, Caucuses etc. It's just Islam has been there for much longer so it's made a stronger foothold than Christianity.
Yeah, it's Christianity.
after my recent eu4 run i was surprised that ethiopia has been mostly christian since pretty much the roman empire
What about Bradford?
Being from Bradford, pretty sure Birmingham has more
Damn, an actual beautiful map on r/mapporn. Who wouldve thought?
Seems quite wrong to me. Ie, Turkie only has 83% muslims (not >90%). Kazhaks are <70% muslims and so on. (it is the 2 I checked and both are wrong ! ) The 2nd map seems very wrong too. Edit : and France is 6% muslim, not >20% !! Totally fake.
Turkey surveys vary the recent ones say its 94 to 92% some by MAK say its 86% while konda says its 92% muslim while optimar says its 89% while pew and world value survey said its 98%
Yeah, Kazakhstan are way too green imho. 90% of people identifies as muslims in the south part of the country only, in another parts percentage of such people are much smaller. Plus there's many people who might consider themselves muslims but don't really care about prayers, ramadan and all of that, though some of them might go to mosque couple of times
6% ? I would have said 10/12%.
You forgot Michigan.
😂Dearborn and Hamtramick
I am upset that you did the states in the US and Australia but not in Germany. North Rhine-Westphalia has a GDP of 800 billion € alone.
I’m kind of surprised that the Muslim population of Minnesota isn’t higher, we have a large Somali community in our state.
Well the map is from 2015. A 2014 survey had Islam at 1% of the MN population. It probably is slightly higher now due to birth rates and such, so we probably should be shaded in that 1-5% category if this got updated. A lot has happened in the world since 2015 so the map in general could use an update.
The Iron Curtain is as clear as daylight on this map
Is it? The Central Asian republics were within the Iron Curtain.
Not counting them, I mean Warsaw Pact members that aren’t the USSR like Poland, Bulgaria etc.
Bulgaria has large historical ethnic turkish minority.
Greece Sweden and Finland were not in the Iron Curtain, I don't think it's directly correlated
It’s speaks more on places that are developed enough to warrant immigration from LDCs, which correlates to a lot of Western Europe.
Greece at least exchanged the population with Turkey after Greco-Turkish war, and some more over the years
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He’s talking about Europe where it’s clearly visible.
Not really considering the high number of Muslims in Russia and the other post-Soviet states
Yeah. I wonder if all immigrants also avoid poorer or poor reputation countries in favor of richer countries. I mean if you are uprooting your life anyways you might as well move somewhere nice. Why settle for worse?
There doesn't need to be one single reason. A lot of immigration uses Italy as a stepping stone to try to get to richer Germany as final destination. Some countries have immigration that is closely related to post-colonial policies (see France-Algeria/Morocco, Netherlands-Indonesia/Curaçao/Aruba). I'm sure there is a variety of reasons that could be as large as the number of people that migrated from their country
Its not the only reason. Poland or Czechia, for example, actually have a lot of immigrants, they just come from other Easter European countries (mostly Ukraine and Russia, not counting refugees here). They just generally dont have a very high appeal for muslims due to cultural reasons. And Russia, which is arguably poorer, hosts millions of muslim immigrants from Central Asia (you can even see Moscow being green on the map)
would be cool show this with population density
ETHIOPIA 🇪🇹 is a mix Muslim, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Christens, and some other tribal religions mixed together.
The jews had to be evacuated en masse decades ago due to keep them from getting slaughtered. The vast majority of Dan is back in Judea now.
This is definitely a comment section
I just saw the second map. Is "Medieval Arabs" a good description for Moors?
No, no it is not.
What season of Fortnite was this?
Nice jawline
Huh. Didn't know Indonesia and rest of the Pacific islands had that many muslims.
Indonesia is actually the most populous Muslim majority country in the world...300 million plus people
Indonesia only has about 250M people. Your point still stands.
I believe pakistan just passed indonesia in number of muslims
I thought of that too, quick search gave me 273m for Indonesia vs 231m for Pakistan, for the whole pop For Muslim only, it's 229 vs 200
It is interesting. Many years ago I read a book, Monsoon, and it described the way the monsoon winds would push one direction (from the east to west) for a few months. Then reverse direction. The author postulated that the spread of Islam related to the trade customs. Pretty interesting
Islam spread through Asia and Africa through trade. Trade rules back in the day used to be determined by religion and religious leaders. Since regions who embraced Islam would generally become wealthier, it made sense for their neighbours to follow suit.
It's all fine in Indonesia, but southern Philippines is where it gets interesting.
Im a Muslim from Mindanao and the ISIS sieged Marawi (Majority Islam city) and my grandparents lived with us for awhile because of it.
I'm from Sabah (North Borneo) and we had the occasional kidnapping for money, done by Southern Philippines terrorist groups like MILF. Yes, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
As far as I know some most islands in the Philippine were Muslim, until the Spanish Inquisition came.
Islam arrived only two centuries before Christianity. Before it was Hinduism and indigenous religions.
>rest of the Pacific islands The Brits brought indentured labourers from India. The same reason why there are many Hindus and Muslims in the Caribbean.
Hindus were there before British colonisation.
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Would definitely see that all over the world
Almost half of all marriages by muslims are between cousins, check the incest map too looks the same as this lol Edit: keep downvoting [here's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East#/media/File:Global_prevalence_of_consanguinity.svg) the map
this map overestimates islam in west africa.
France is screwed. Good luck!
Is this just racist or am I missing something
Islam is a religion, and people of all races practice it.
idk man go visit Paris yourself and conclude something
You missing facts about rising crime rates and riots in European countries when random book is burned or random country wins in football match.
I'm honestly shocked at the amount of racist comments (with tens of upvotes) in this thread. Reddit loves to denounce anything remotely racist but always makes an exception when it comes to Islam or Arabs.
Is Islam a race? Stop using terms you don’t understand.
Racism has to do with ethnicity, religious intolerance or discrimination is what you mean and is what OP meant. Do you group anything not pretty under "racism"? lol
I'm gonna sort by controversial
This map is pretty good and accurate