[Froztnova]

I also did a double take when I learned that they were Muslim-majority too. It flies in the face of a lot of assumptions.

[cdmckay]

Which assumptions are those?

[Froztnova]

Mostly just that it's easy for an American (or at least, myself circa several years ago) to assume that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Muslims live in middle eastern countries, and when I first learned that Indonesia was the world's largest Muslim majority country it proved that mental heuristic to be entirely inaccurate.

I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising though, I mean Christianity sure as hell got around too.

[lordnacho]

Ask someone in the West what the largest muslim country is.

[aprilthird2021]

You must not have known about Malaysia then either?

[Froztnova]

Correct, it was around the time I learned how big Islam was in certain parts of Southeast Asia in general. It's just massively under-represented in news and popular culture and my historical/geographic education never really went into much detail on Asia.

[throwaway290]

Why? It's a big religion in the world and I heard it grows at 30% per year

[_DeadFred_]

How much of that is just because people aren't allowed to leave the religion though? My whole family would be considered Catholic if we still had those sorts of old thinking rules that Islam still has. Instead we have lots of people becoming Catholic and lots leaving balancing out.

[rar00]

typo? Rounding it up to 2 billion, 30% means 600 million per year

[yieldcrv]

Check out the predominant races there, you’ve probably never heard of them!

[nokun7]

What sorts of assumptions?