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cdmckay | 3 months ago

Which assumptions are those?

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Froztnova|3 months ago

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.

flopsamjetsam|3 months ago

> 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 live in Australia, and when I was growing up I thought the same, even though Indonesia are a very close neighbour of ours. Indonesia is featured quite a bit in our local news these days, and that together with lots of Aussie tourists in Indonesia, plus lots of Indonesian students studying here, has made us a little more knowledgeable about our neighbours.

elgenie|3 months ago

The top five countries in the world by Muslim population are not in the Middle East/North Africa region: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria.

deepspace|3 months ago

That's so weird. What do they teach in American schools? Apparently not even basic geography? The fact that Indonesia was Muslim is something I learned very early on - certainly before high school.

mmooss|3 months ago

India (also not Middle Eastern) has the largest population of Muslim people, but it is not 'majority Muslim'.

rafram|3 months ago

Only 20% of the Muslims in the world live in the Middle East.

lawlessone|3 months ago

Yeah if i only went by TV news i'd come to the same general conclusion. And if i narrowed it down to just Fox i'd probably think it was the UK.

screye|3 months ago

There no middle-eastern countries among the top 5 muslim countries by population.

It goes: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh & Nigeria, in that order.

lordnacho|3 months ago

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