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Why does Latin/South America (Including the Caribbean) and East Asia (Japan, China, Korea, etc.) have very low Islamic population, while Europe and also somewhat North America have higher? Why don't Muslims move to South America and East Asia as well, rather than sticking to mostly in Europe, Australia/New Zealand and North America?
Muslims make up 0.8% of the population of the United States, and it's 3.2% in Canada. I wouldn't really call either of those high, especially the United States.
Also you have to remember that the Americas were colonized by Christian countries, and that it's estimated that, at the time of colonization, that 90% of the indigenous peoples of the Americas died from disease alone as they had no immunity to the diseases the Europeans brought over. Many others died from fighting the European powers, and many of the remaining indigenous peoples were converted to Christianity, whether it was through force or otherwise.
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Originally Posted by violent by design
South America was conquered by Spain and Portugal which are two Catholic bodies. There is 100s of years of Christianity engraved into Latin America. Muslims have had no real reasons to move to Latin America, I mean Latin America was hardly a place of prosperity, even to this day much of Latin America is relatively undeveloped - it is also in the Western hemisphere, so naturally Muslims who are based more around Asia Minor are not going to come all the way across the world for nothing, when there are better places to live that are in closer proximity.
Once upon a time large parts of Latin America were vastly more prosperous than what is now the United States and Canada. Britain's colonies were rather backwater in comparison to Spain's colonies, but obviously a lot has changed since the colonial period.
There will be a lot of racial and/or religious-related violence if Muslims were to be living in Latin America. Both sides are hot-blooded and would clash immensely. Not to mention, Latin American countries are developing (or not developed enough), so that's why people don't immigrate there.
Incidentally, Argentina might be the first country in Latin America to be as developed as, say, Australia or NZ in the near future.
Also, and I forgot to mention this, but many of the Western countries today that have sizeable Muslim populations do so because many of them are immigrants/the children of immigrants from the former colonies of said countries. Obviously this isn't the case with a country like Sweden that takes in a lot of refugees, but many of the Muslims in France, for example, are from France's former colonies in North Africa.
You also have some countries in the Balkans that have had high Muslim populations for centuries due to the Ottoman Empire, and of course Russia has a sizable population because it conquered many of those areas, and others have immigrated from former Soviet states that today are majority Muslim.
There are sizable Muslim populations in the Guyana and Suriname, former British and Dutch colonies, respectively. While they are not part of Latin America, they are most certainly part of South America. Suriname in fact has the highest percentage of Muslims in North or South America, and as far as I know, has a higher percentage of Muslims than anywhere in Western Europe as well. This is a stark demographic contrast to the countries which were former Portuguese and Spanish colonies. This undoubtedly has much to do with the spread of Spanish colonialism in the same era as the Reconquista, Inquisition, and subsequent expulsion of Jews and Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula
I wasn't aware Vietnam has a low Muslim population, that is interesting as there are neighboring countries that have relatively high Muslim populations. I don't know the answer to that one. Is there a Muslim presence (or lack of) in Laos and Cambodia as well?
My guess they couldn't fight their way through the Buddhist of the neighboring countries in sufficient numbers before the Catholic priest arrived with the French. By the 1950s the socialist/atheist were at war with first the colonizers then the south and in victory all but suppressed all religion leaving no room for Islam to fill a void left when the remaining Catholics became boat people and refugees. They were able to flank the problem by sea to get to the Philippines but were not consolidated throughout all the islands before the Spanish and their Catholic priest arrived.
Once upon a time large parts of Latin America were vastly more prosperous than what is now the United States and Canada. Britain's colonies were rather backwater in comparison to Spain's colonies, but obviously a lot has changed since the colonial period.
Sea power, the colonizing nations had it. Islamic states did not they followed a land bridge to become dominate in their portion of the globe for the most part.
The overall percentage of Muslims is low in China. But quite a few cities/counties have Muslims as majority, especially in the northwest. In some counties in Xinjiang, Muslims are over 90%. So China is the only country in East Asia to have some real Islamic societies.
Because East Asian and South American nations did not colonize and oppress Islamic countries for centuries, and thereby establish a cultural bond with them
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