Religion
| Religions of Chinese Malaysians | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Religion | Percent | |||
| Buddhism | 83.56% | |||
| Christianity | 11.05% | |||
| Taoism / Chinese folk religion | 3.41% | |||
| Islam | 0.66% | |||
| Hinduism | 0.23% | |||
| Other religions | 0.13% | |||
| No religion / Unknown | 0.95% | |||
A majority of the Chinese in Malaysia claim to be Buddhist or Taoist, though the lines between them are often blurred and, typically, a syncretic Chinese religion incorporating elements of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and traditional ancestor-worship is practiced, with the fact that each individual follows it in varying degrees. Thus, Chinese Buddhism is traditionally embraced by the Chinese which is brought over from China and handed down over the generations of Malaysian Chinese born in Malaysia.
About 11.05% are Christian (Mainstream Protestants, Catholics and other denominations including a fast-growing number of Evangelicals and Charismatics). This is largely due to the influences of Western educated Malaysian Chinese who went overseas either for studies or work.
A small number (0.66%) profess Islam as their faith due mostly to the compulsory conversion to Islam should a Chinese marry a Muslim in Malaysia. Nonetheless, the figure is rather understated due to the fact that most of the Chinese-Muslim individual is easily absorbed with the larger Malay majority population, due to identification of a common religious background, effective assimilation and intermarriage.
Read more about this topic: Malaysian Chinese
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Those to whom God has imparted religion by feeling of the heart are very fortunate and are rightly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give it by feeling of the heart—without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism—at least in the sense of this work—is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.”
—Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872)
“Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made—no matter how indirectly—to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)