islam-by-country

"Only the Muslims resisted. Located on the islands of Mindanao, Palawan, and on the Sulu chain, the Moros (the name for Filipino Muslims, from the Spanish word for Moors) turned away all attempts at pacification or conversion during one-third of a millennium, much after the rest of the country had settled into docile tranquility. Unlike the pagans, they fought Spain in long and vicious wars. In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards pursued a strategy of containing Islam’s expansion and in the seventeenth they tried to Christianize the south; in 1700-50 they tried but failed to tempt the Moros with a policy of lenience and attraction; Spanish attacks temporarily broke Moro power at times during 1750-1850; from 1850 to 1890 Spain tried again to subdue the Moros through force; and in 1890-98, the last years of Spain’s presence, the occupation was marked by panic and intolerance as the Philippines slipped from Spain’s grasp. When the United States took control of the country in 1898, it inherited the Moro problem (viewed as a variant on its Indian troubles at home), and two years later launched a full-scale assault on them. At last, in 1913, General John Pershing of World War I fame subjugated them, using the full array of modem technology, including steamships, the .45 caliber revolver, and dumdum bullets. After three and a half centuries, the Muslims had finally been vanquished. Even this was not permanent, however, as violence broke out anew in 1972, once again over the issue of Manila’s control over the Muslim regions in the south."

"Muslims first arrived on the Philippine archipelago as traders in the tenth century and were followed by Islamic missionaries about three hundred years later. Many tribesmen of the southernmost islands were converted, so that by the mid-fifteenth century the island of Sulu had emerged as a leading center of Islam. In subsequent decades, Muslim rule reached as far as Luzon, the northern island, though when the Spanish explorer Magellan arrived in 1521, the Islamic faith had gained a firm hold only in the south. The Spanish government under Charles V (r. 1517-56) virtually ignored the archipelago but Philip II (r. 1556-98) did take an interest—as the name of the country commemorates to this day. In 1564 Philip dispatched Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to pacify the islands and make them Christian. Legazpi won Manila from the Muslims in 1571 and then captured all of Luzon. Other islands fell in rapid succession and by 1600 most of the archipelago had submitted to Spain. The pagan inhabitants accepted Spanish dominion with little resistance; after the conquest, they quickly accepted the Spaniards’ language, religion, culture and institutions."

"The government of Myanmar denied committing any atrocities against the Rohingyas, asserting that many widely reported incidents had been fabricated, but the media generally brushed aside these denials. Few news outlets reported that the conflict had intensified in the summer and fall of 2017 because of an August 2017 jihad attack on Myanmar police and border posts. And hardly any news reports informed the public about the roots of the conflict: the Rohingya Muslims had actually been waging jihad against the Buddhists of Myanmar for nearly two centuries... In 1942, the British armed the Rohingyas to fight the Japanese, but the Rohingyas instead turned their weapons on the Buddhists, destroying whole villages, as well as Buddhist monasteries. When the British withdrew that same year in the face of the Japanese advance, the Rohingyas set upon the Buddhists of Arakan in force, killing at least 20,000... But for the media, the crisis in Myanmar was simply a matter of “anti-Muslim bigotry”..."

"We have seen that in Burmah the Hindu settlers have a tendency to become absorbed in the Buddhist population around them, but this is not so with the Muhammadans. There are scattered communities of Muhammadans who have been settled in Burmah for several generations and still retain their faith unimpaired. When a Muhammadan marries a Burmese wife he brings up his children in his own religion. The offsprings of these mixed marriages are known as Zerbadis."

"‘At the time when there were heathens along the sea coast of Java, many merchants used to come, Parsees, Arabs, Gujaratees, Bengalees, Malays and other nationalities, there being many Moors among them. They began to trade in the country and to grow rich. They succeeded in way of [sic]making mosques, and mollahs came from outside, so that they came in such growing numbers that the sons of these said Moors were already Javanese and rich, for they had been in these parts for about seventy years. In some places the heathen Javanese lords themselves turned Mohammedan, and these mollahs and merchant Moors took possession of these places. Others had a way of fortifying the places where they lived, and they killed the Javanese lords and made themselves lords; and in this way they made themselves masters of the sea coast and took over trade and power in Java . . .’"

"The fact that Islam sits lightly on most Muslims in Indonesia, has not prevented a hard core to display the patented behaviour pattern of Islam. In Irian Jaya (West New Guinea), the Papua tribals are overrun by immigrant Muslims from Java. Many of them have already been converted by force or social pressure. In ex-Portuguese East Timor, which Indonesia has annexed against the United Nations' will, massacres of Christians or Animist natives by Muslim immigrants and soldiers have happened on a large scale. In Bali, the Hindus are not exactly persecuted, but Muslim immigrants from Java have acquired the positions of power. By the standards which Indian Muslims use to measure "discrimination against the minorities", the Hindus of Bali could claim that they are discriminated against. Nevertheless, the situation in most of Indonesia still seems to be much better than in Bangladesh (let alone Pakistan), and the communities live together rather peacefully. But it has taken tough rulers to uphold this relatively stable pluralism."

"From the fourteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, the (Indonesian) archipelago saw almost no organised Muslim missionary activity."

"Islam has struck deeper roots on the coast, and has tended to be at its most self- conscious among trading communities. There has often been tension, and sometimes devastating warfare, between the coast and the interior. Although it is attractive to think of Islam as a causative factor in this conflict, it would probably be more correct to think of it as deriving from primary economic and political differences, with a rather more self- conscious Islam providing from time to time a convenient rallying banner for the coastal states."

"In Indonesia we were almost at the limit of the Islamic world. For a thousand years or so until 1400 this had been a cultural and religious part of Greater India: animist, Buddhist, Hindu. Islam had come here not long before Europe. It had not been the towering force it had been in other converted places. For the last two hundred years, in a colonial world, Islam had even been on the defensive, the religion of a subject people. It had not completely possessed the souls of people. It was still a missionary religion. It had been kept alive informally in colonial times, in simple village boarding schools, descended perhaps as an idea from Buddhist monasteries. Islam and Europe had arrived here almost at the same time as competing imperialisms, and between them they had destroyed the long Buddhist-Hindu past. Islam had moved on here, to this part of Greater India, after its devastation of India proper, turning the religious-cultural light of the subcontinent, so far as this region was concerned, into the light of a dead star."

"The people of Perlak (Nth Sumatra) used to be idolaters, but owing to contact with Saracen merchants, who continually resort here in their ships, they have all been converted to the law of Mahomet."

"In the course of the centuries, Islam spread throughout the Javanese population, until its adoption by the last large district, the “east hook,” was accomplished in the late eighteenth century. This process seems on the whole to have been peaceful, or as peaceful as it could have been in a period of Javanese history characterized by almost incessant warfare. Conversion by arms may have occurred when a Muslim dignitary defeated a non­ Muslim, whereupon the vanquished and his people would presumably have embraced Islam."

"It has sometimes been assumed, with extraordinary unconcern for the historical evidence, that the more self-conscious Muslims of the coast were the greatest enemies of the Dutch Protestants, while the less firm Muslims ruling the interior kingdom of Mataram more readily became the tools of the Europeans. But this is simply not so."

"Taipei Mayor Ko hopes to make Taipei the world's most Muslim-friendly tourist spot, and we (Taipei City Government) are approaching that goal step-by-step."

"The tomb of late general Bai Chongxi will form the basis for a Muslim cultural area and Taiwan historical park."

"The relationship between the ethnic Chinese and Islamic worlds dates back more than 1,300 years. Although Muslims are a minority group in Taiwan, the government is working tirelessly to safeguard their rights."

"The (Taipei) city (government) should use its budget to build a bigger mosque, preferably close to an MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station."

"We aim to make Tainan a Muslim-friendly city with services from birth to death."

"I think that fasting (in the month of Ramadan for Muslims) is not only a religious rite, but also a symbol of human rights, as there are many places in the world that are going through rough times, and fasting shows our devotion."

"Taiwan is making an effort to become a Muslim-friendly society in the areas of tourism, trade, culture and more."

"There are kind and compassionate hearts that aims to bring the greatest comfort and support to believers in every religious culture. The Islamic culture is all over Asia. Although the number of people who believe in Islam in Taiwan is relatively small, the pious hearts of Muslims show no difference."

"Once our borders open for tourists (after COVID-19 lockdown), we need to have sufficient facilities for Muslim tourists. Even though we do not have many Muslim friends here (in Taipei) at the moment, we are committed to building a foundation."

"Taipei is committed to becoming a friendly, diverse and inclusive city."

"A Muslim who knows French will never be a dangerous Muslim."

"Islam in France must be freed from foreign influence."

"I think that Serbia is not a country in which it is important what nationality you are and where you come from."

"My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. Okay, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks."

"Then there is the case of the book published in 1990 by a Muslim who called himself "Mohamed Rasoel"... Recalling the many cries of "Death to Salman Rushdie," the author chose a pseudonym that means "Muhammad the Prophet," calculating that Muslims would find it difficult to shout "Death to Muhammad the Prophet."... Warning that the Dutch are mistaken to tolerate the establishment of Islamic institutions and the mushrooming growth of their Muslim population, The Impending Ruin of the Netherlands predicted this would lead to a civil war and the country's partition... Many progressive intellectuals reacted to the book in a vicious way... A number of bookstores refused to sell the book... He felt vindicated by it: It proves that the general thrust of my book is correct, that Dutch society is changing and becoming less tolerant. Freedom of opinion is already being sacrificed. Muslims are allowed to shout: kill Rushdie... When Muslims say on TV that all Dutch women are whores, it is allowed."

"The Dutch example shows that when people overcome their fear, David can defeat Goliath."

"They [Dutch politicians] are not interested in the interests of the Dutch citizen and are working along on the transformation of The Netherlands into Netherabia as a province of the Islamic superstate Eurabia."

"In 1990, a Pakistani living in Holland published a book, De Ondergang van Nederland ("The Downfall of the Netherlands"), about the mistaken Muslim policy of his host country... Unfortunately, he too treats "the Muslims" as a static entity, and he idealizes the Europeans instead of seeing that our level of tolerance is the result of a historical process which the Muslims can and should also go through (discarding their Muslim-ness on the way, like Europe largely discarded Christianity)... The reaction of the press was most interesting. The leftist press had nothing but scorn for his message, and concentrated on the more sensational effort of finding out the writer's identity. At first they were very sure that it had to be some fascist racist Dutchman trying to sound more convincing by adopting an exotic pseudonym."