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:
“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)
“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)