Indonesia
POPULATION 231,328,092
MUSLIM 88.8 percent
PROTESTANT 5 percent
CATHOLIC 2.9 percent
HINDU 2.4 percent
BUDDHIST 0.7 percent
OTHER 0.2 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Republic of Indonesia, located in Southeast Asia between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, is an archipelago of more than 13,000 islands, about 6,000 of which are inhabited. To the north is the Philippines, and to the south is Australia. Its people speak more than 200 languages, with Indonesian being the official national language. Java, the most populous island in the archipelago, is the principal locus of economic and political power. Formerly known as the Dutch East Indies, the islands were named Indonesia in 1884 C.E. The country became independent from the Netherlands in 1945.
In Indonesia there are traces of ancestral cults and spirit worship dating back to the prehistoric Stone Age and Bronze Age. Such indigenous religions have shaped almost all later introduced religious beliefs and practices. Hinduism and Buddhism were taken to the islands beginning in the first or second century C.E. and were the dominant religions until the sixteenth century.
As early as the seventh century several Indonesian islands, especially Sumatra, were visited by Persian and Arabian traders, among them Zoroastrians, Nestorians, Christians, and Muslims.
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