Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
world religions is a generalization, and caution must be
used when making observations from the map. First, the
shadings on the map show the major religion in an area,
thereby masking minority religions, many of which have
a signifi cant number of followers. India, for example, is
depicted as a Hindu region (except in the northwest),
but other religions, such as Islam and Sikhism, attract
millions of adherents in India. Of the 1.2 billion people
in India, 161 million are Muslims, which makes India
the third largest Muslim country in the world behind
Indonesia and Pakistan.
Second, some of the regions shown as belonging to
a particular religion are places where faiths have pene-
trated relatively recently and where traditional religious
ideas infl uence the practice of the dominant faith. Many
Christian and Muslim Africans, for example, continue
to believe in traditional powers even as they profess a
belief in a universalizing religion. A 2010 Pew Research
survey of 25,000 people in 19 African countries found
“Large numbers of Africans actively participate in
Christianity or Islam yet also believe in witchcraft, evil
spirits, sacrifi ces to ancestors, traditional religious heal-
ers, reincarnation and other elements of traditional
African religions.” The survey found 25 percent of
Christian Africans and 30 percent of Muslim Africans
they interviewed believed in the protective power of
sacrifi ces to spirits or ancestors. The country with the
highest percentage of respondents who agreed with this
statement was Tanzania with 60 percent, and the lowest
was Rwanda with 5 percent.
In Cameroon, 42 percent of those surveyed believed
in the protective power of sacrifi ces to spirits or ancestors.
For example, the Bamileke tribe in Cameroon lives in an
area colonized by the French, who brought Catholicism
to the region. The Bamileke are largely Christian today,
but they also continue to practice aspects of their tradi-
tional, animist religion. Ancestors are still very impor-
tant in the lives of the Bamileke. Many believe ancestors
decide everything for them. It is common practice to take
the skull of a deceased male member of the tribe and place
it in the basement of the home of the family's oldest liv-
ing male. Birth practices also refl ect traditional religious
practices. The Bamileke bury the umbilical cord in the
ground outside their home so that the baby remembers
where he or she came from. Members of the Bamileke
tribe also commonly have two weddings today: one in the
church and one traditional.
Finally, Figure 7.6 does not refl ect the rise in sec-
ularism in the world, especially in Europe. In a number
of areas many people have moved away from organized
religion entirely. Thus, France appears on the map as a
Roman Catholic country, yet a large proportion of peo-
ple in France profess adherence to no particular faith,
and only 13 percent of French people say religion is very
important in their lives.
Despite the limitations of the map of world reli-
gions, it illustrates how far Christian religions have dif-
fused (2.25 billion adherents worldwide), the extent of the
diffusion of Islam (1.57 billion), the connection between
Hinduism (950 million adherents) and one of the world's
major population concentrations, and the continued
importance Buddhism (347 million followers) plays in
parts of Asia. Many factors help explain the distributions
shown on the map, but each of the widespread religions
shares one characteristic in common: they are all uni-
versalizing religions.
Universalizing religions
actively
seek converts because they view themselves as offering
belief systems of universal appropriateness and appeal.
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism all fall within this cate-
gory, and their universalizing character helps explain their
widespread distribution.
Universalizing religions are relatively few in num-
ber and of recent origin. Throughout human history,
a greater number of religions have not actively sought
converts. Rather, a given religion has been practiced by
one particular culture or ethnic group. In an
ethnic reli-
gion
, adherents are born into the faith and converts are
not actively sought. Ethnic religions tend to be spatially
concentrated—as is the case with traditional religions in
Africa and South America (250 million followers). The
principal exception is Judaism (13 million adherents), an
ethnic religion whose adherents are widely scattered as a
result of forced and voluntary migrations.
From the Hearth of South Asia
Hinduism
In terms of number of adherents,
Hinduism
ranks
third after Christianity and Islam as a world religion.
Hinduism is one of the oldest religions in the modern
world, dating back over 4000 years, originating in the
Indus River Valley of what is today part of Pakistan.
Hinduism is unique among world religions in a number
of ways. The religion does not have a single founder, a
single theology, or agreement on its origins. The com-
mon account of the history of Hinduism holds that the
religion is based on ancient practices in the Indus River
cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. The ancient prac-
tices included ritual bathing and belief in reincarnation,
or at least a long journey after death. The common his-
tory says that Aryans invaded (some say migrated) into
the Indus region and gave the name Hinduism to the
diverse religious practices of the people who lived along
the Indus River.
Despite the ambiguous beginnings of Hinduism,
one thing is certain: Hinduism is no longer associ-
ated with its hearth in Pakistan. The vast majority of
Pakistanis are Muslim, and as Figure 7.6 demonstrates,
the vast majority of Indians are Hindu. Archaeologists
