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)
“Awareness of the stars and their light pervades the Koran, which reflects the brightness of the heavenly bodies in many verses. The blossoming of mathematics and astronomy was a natural consequence of this awareness. Understanding the cosmos and the movements of the stars means understanding the marvels created by Allah. There would be no persecuted Galileo in Islam, because Islam, unlike Christianity, did not force people to believe in a “fixed” heaven.”
—Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan sociologist. Islam and Democracy, ch. 9, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (Trans. 1992)
“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)