Indonesia, a Muslim Country

Indonesia, a Muslim Country

A friend gave me a book "What Every American Should Know About the Rest of the World." by M.L. Rossi whMuslimich is informative and which explains complicated world issues in an understandable manner. Before reading this book, I didn’t know that the Republic of Indonesia has more then three hundred ethnic groups and is 88% Muslim. Nor did I realize it has a population of 228 million people in a republic with some seventeen thousand islands! The inhabitants range from the well educated to jungle tribes. While Bahasa Indonesia is the official language, there are some 300 languages spoken.The October 2002 bomb in a disco on Bali killed some 180 people, mostly tourists and was believed to be the work of a militant Muslim group whose goal is to make Indonesia an Islamic government through activities like attacking Western interests and Western tourists. Indonesia, with it’s 201 million Muslims, is the country with the most Muslims in the world. Pakistan has 145 million, India 124 million, Turkey 67 million, Egypt 66 million and Iran 66 million, according to the book. Given these numbers, it is easy to understand that while most Muslims in the world are moderates, there are fundamentalists and militants in the hundreds of thousands who see the West and particularly the United States as an "evil empire" which explains the endless supply of suicide bombers and terrorist recruits. The religious differences in the world account for so much of the world’s turmoil. A book which I found very helpful in appreciating the significance of religion in world affairs is "The Mighty and the Almighty, Reflections on America, God and World Affairs by Madeleine Albright

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