Religion
| Religions of Chinese Malaysians | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Religion | Percent | |||
| Buddhism | 83.56% | |||
| Christianity | 11.05% | |||
| Taoism / Chinese folk religion | 3.41% | |||
| Islam | 0.66% | |||
| Hinduism | 0.23% | |||
| Other religions | 0.13% | |||
| No religion / Unknown | 0.95% | |||
A majority of the Chinese in Malaysia claim to be Buddhist or Taoist, though the lines between them are often blurred and, typically, a syncretic Chinese religion incorporating elements of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and traditional ancestor-worship is practiced, with the fact that each individual follows it in varying degrees. Thus, Chinese Buddhism is traditionally embraced by the Chinese which is brought over from China and handed down over the generations of Malaysian Chinese born in Malaysia.
About 11.05% are Christian (Mainstream Protestants, Catholics and other denominations including a fast-growing number of Evangelicals and Charismatics). This is largely due to the influences of Western educated Malaysian Chinese who went overseas either for studies or work.
A small number (0.66%) profess Islam as their faith due mostly to the compulsory conversion to Islam should a Chinese marry a Muslim in Malaysia. Nonetheless, the figure is rather understated due to the fact that most of the Chinese-Muslim individual is easily absorbed with the larger Malay majority population, due to identification of a common religious background, effective assimilation and intermarriage.
Read more about this topic: Malaysian Chinese
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism—at least in the sense of this work—is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.”
—Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872)
“Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn. The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine in. If they must be showing their Zeal for the Publick, let it not be against those who are perhaps of the same Family, or at least of the same Religion or Nation, but against those who are the open, professed, undoubted Enemies of their Faith, Liberty, and Country.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.”
—Ernest Renan (1823–1892)