Malaysia is a country in Asia that
consists of thirteen states and three federal territories. It is a multi-ethnic and
multi-cultural country. The constitution declares Islam the state religion
while still protecting freedom of religion, which I found pretty interesting. In
Malaysia’s 2010 Census, 61.4% of the population was listed as Islamic. Then
19.8% practice Buddhism, 9.2% are Christian, 6.3% practice Hinduism, 1.3%
practice Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions, while
0.7% claimed not to be religious and 1.4% practice other religions or did not
provide the information of their religious background. I found this really
interesting because of where Malaysia is geographically located. Since it is
located in Asia, I thought that the religion most practiced would either be
Buddhism or Hinduism. I especially thought so while taking the countries surrounding
Malaysia into consideration. Malaysia shares borders on land with Thailand, Indonesia,
and Brunei, and borders across the sea with Singapore, Vietnam, and the
Philippines. I know very little about the dominant religious practices in other
countries, because it’s not something I ever thought to pay attention to. However,
I found it really interesting to look it all up and compare their percentages
to Malaysia’s as well as each other’s.
Like Malaysia, all of the following
percentages are based off each of each country’s 2010 Census. Thailand has no
official state religion, but 94.6% of the population is Theravada Buddhists.
However, in Indonesia 87.1% of the population is Islamic and in Brunei 67% is
Islamic. The countries bordering Malaysia across the sea have a smaller
percentage of their populations practicing Islam. 33.3% of Singapore’s
population practices Buddhism and 14.7% are Islamic. Vietnam’s 2009 Census
recorded 81% of the population as non-believers, although the 2010 survey of
the Pew Research Center in Washington D.C. contradicts that recording 45.3% of
the population practicing indigenous religions and 16.4% as Buddhists. Finally,
in the Philippines 80.9% are Roman Catholic and only 5% are Islamic.
I also looked at the religions that
each of these countries considered their official state religion and whether or
not their constitutions provided their citizens with the right of freedom of
religion. All of these countries, including Malaysia, give their citizens rights
to freedom of religion, but not all have an official state religion. As I said
earlier Malaysia’s official state religion is Islamic and so is Brunei’s. However,
the other five countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines)
do not have an official state religion.
It’s really interesting to see the
drastic change in the cultures, as far as religion goes, of each of the countries
across the ocean borders of Malaysia versus the land borders. In two out of the
three countries bordering Malaysia, the Islamic religion is most practiced. However,
when you look at the countries bordering Malaysia across the sea, none of those
countries show the Islamic religion as their most practiced religion. This was
really interesting to me because I wasn't expecting to see those differences
and especially not so drastically. However, it does make sense that each of
these countries would have different religions as their most practiced
religion. I guess what was most unexpected is that Malaysia would have the Islamic
religion as the most practiced religion because of its location in Asia and
that most of its surrounding countries did not share Islam as the most
practiced religion. However, I found it really interesting and fun to learn so
much about Malaysia’s, as well as its surrounding countries’, percentages of
different religious practices and I enjoyed comparing their percentages to each
other.
