Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7.17
London, England. This large
mosque in East London serves the
United Kingdom's largest Muslim
community. It attests to the scale
of Islamic migration to the United
Kingdom over the past several
decades. Global religions are not
grouped into neat geographical
spaces; they are now found side by
side all over the world.
© Alexander
B. Murphy.
Philippines. Islam is strongly represented in India, with
over 161 million adherents, and in Subsaharan Africa,
with approximately 190 million adherents. Islam has
followers in Bosnia and Albania and has substantial
numbers of adherents in the United States and west-
ern Europe (Fig. 7.17). The largest Muslim country is
actually outside of the Middle East, in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia has nearly 200 million adherents. In fact, of
Islam's 1.57 billion followers, more than half live out-
side Southwest Asia and North Africa. And not every-
one in Southwest Asia and North Africa is Muslim.
The region is home to millions of Christians, Jews, and
other smaller religious sects.
and visionary. Shamans have appeared at various times
to various peoples in Africa, Native America, Southeast
Asia, and East Asia. These appearances had similar effects
on the cultures of widely scattered peoples. Perhaps
if these shamanist religions had developed elaborate
bureaucracies and sent representatives to international
congresses, they would have become more similar and
might have evolved into another world religion. Unlike
Christianity or Islam, the shamanist faiths are small and
comparatively isolated.
Shamanism is a traditional religion, an intimate
part of a local culture and society, but not all traditional
religions are shamanist. Many traditional African reli-
gions involve beliefs in a god as creator and provider,
in divinities both superhuman and human, in spirits,
and in a life hereafter. Christianity and Islam have con-
verted some followers of traditional religions, but as the
map indicates, they have failed to convert most African
peoples, except in limited areas. Figure 7.6 shows
where the adherents to traditional religions remain in
the majority.
Indigenous and Shamanist
Finally, Figure 7.6 identifies large areas in Africa and
several other parts of the world as “Indigenous and
Shamanist.” Indigenous religions are local in scope,
usually have a reverence for nature, and are passed
down through family units and groups (tribes) of
indigenous peoples. No central tenet or belief can be
ascribed to all indigenous religions. We do not group
indigenous religions because they share a common
theology or belief system. Instead, we group indige-
nous religions because they share the same pressures
from the diffusion of global religions—and they have
survived (Fig. 7.18).
Shamanism is a community faith in which people
follow their shaman—a religious leader, teacher, healer,
The Rise of Secularism
The world map of religion might mislead us into assum-
ing that all or even most of the people in areas portrayed
as Christian or Buddhist do in fact adhere to these faiths.
This is not the case. Even the most careful analysis of
worldwide church and religious membership produces
a total of about 4 billion adherents—in a population of
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