Religious Demography
Malaysia has a population of just over 27 million. As of the last Population and Housing Census, 60.4 percent of the population practices Islam; 19.2 percent Buddhism; 9.1 percent Christianity; 6.3 percent Hinduism; and 2.6 percent traditional Chinese religions. The remainder is accounted for by other faiths, including Animism, Folk religion, Sikhism and other belief systems. However, these figures may be misleading as professing the religion of Islam is a requirement for being a Malay in the sense of the Malaysian Constitution. Moreover, Muslims who wish to leave Islam face strong disincentives.
Read more about this topic: Freedom Of Religion In Malaysia
Famous quotes containing the word religious:
“We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.”
—Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945)