Islam
Islam reached the Philippines in the 14th century with the arrival of Malay and Javanese merchants and Muslim merchants from Malaysia and Indonesia, although the spreading of Islam in the Philippines is due to the commercial contacts between the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia. It was the merchants of the Gulf – Arabs, Persians, Sindhis, Azeris and even Pashtuns – who brought Islam to Southeast Asia, including the Philippines. There are about 5 to 10 million Muslims in the Philippines, approximately 5-10% of the total population. Muslims make up about 20 percent of the population of the island of Mindanao, approximately 5 million of the 25 million people on Mindanao.
Read more about this topic: Religion In The Philippines, Abrahamic
Famous quotes containing the word islam:
“Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anemia.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)
“The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)