Which assumptions are those?

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.

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

> 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.

Also, the Indonesia that most Australians only ever visit is Bali, which is mostly Hindu.

It seems things are improving for Christians in Indonesia in 2025 - or is the data missing?

https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/

I would treat these rankings with suspicion.

I checked them for a few nations where I had solid on-the-ground knowledge, and the ranks and full-profile descriptions are straight up false. Usually propaganda involves lying by omission or hyperbole. In this case, it is just wrong.

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.

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

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

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.

TBH, without going into overmuch detail, I wouldn't generalize from my educational experience to the American educational system as a whole. I think it was better in a lot of ways, and worse in a few ways, than what most people would have received, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some particular holes in my knowledge due to taking part in multiple curricula from different institutions.

Now figure out how Christianity got around in SEA region.

He’s being obtuse, it isn’t common knowledge at all.

> What do they teach in American schools? Apparently not even basic geography?

This doesn’t fall under the category of basic geography. I can guarantee you that the majority of people you attended school with would not be able to locate Indonesia on a map, much less tell you about the religions practiced there.

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

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

It is a little bit wild that 3/5 all came from the same country. Without the partition of ‘47 - India would have by far the largest group of about 600M a full a third of the global Muslims and also at the same time be only a minority in that hypothetical country with 1.1B Hindus

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

You must not have known about Malaysia then either?

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.

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

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

Maybe. Could be somebody was repeating some sort of misinformation. Quick check says more like 20% in 10 years.

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.

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

What sorts of assumptions?