Mozambique
POPULATION 19,607,519
AFRICAN INDIGENOUS BELIEFS 49.5 percent
CHRISTIAN 30 percent
MUSLIM 20 percent
HINDU 0.5 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Republic of Mozambique lies on the southeastern coast of Africa. It is bordered to the north by Tanzania; to the northwest by Lake Nyasa, Malawi, and Zambia; to the west by Zimbabwe; and to the southwest and south by South Africa and Swaziland. It is separated from the island of Madagascar to the east by the Mozambique Channel, an arm of the Indian Ocean.
For centuries before the arrival of Arab Muslim merchants in the 600s and European colonizers in the 1500s, virtually every Mozambican worshiped in ways prescribed by indigenous religious tradition, which consisted primarily of ancestor veneration and the belief in one, transcendental being (God) and in the existence of spirits. As Islam and Christianity have competed for the souls of the practitioners of traditional religion, many traditionalists have continued to practice their religion.
Islam was introduced in northern Mozambique via the Arabian Peninsula. Arab merchants, some of whom ventured into the interior, spread the new faith, sparing the Africans the full force of the jihad, or holy war. Muslim brotherhoods, such as the Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya, which were strong in West Africa, especially during the nineteenth century, were absent in Mozambique, however.
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