The International Religious Freedom Report 2007, of U.S. Department of State, estimated that more than 8 million foreigners are living and working in Saudi Arabia, including Muslims and non-Muslims.
There are 400,000 Sri Lankans, as well as a few thousand Buddhist workers from East Asia, the majority of which are: Chinese, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese. There is also a possibility that a percentage of Nepalese immigrants also help make up the estimated 8 million foreign residents in Saudi Arabia.
This amount of foreign inhabitants makes about 1.5% of Saudi Arabia's population Buddhists, or around 400,000 nominal Buddhists, most likely giving Saudi Arabia the largest Buddhist community in the Middle East or Arab World.
Famous quotes containing the word buddhism:
“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)