Islam in Myanmar – Research Notes
Asst. Prof. Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf
Lecturer and Director, Center for Buddhist-Muslim Understanding
College of Religious Studies, Mahidol University
Salaya, Thailand
Myanmar is a non-secular Buddhist majority country. The
Theravada Buddhists and Christians are the two main religious communities
groups in Myanmar with the Muslims being the third, enumerated population of
Burma tells that, Buddhists make up 89.8 percent of the population, Christians
6.3 percent and Muslims 2.3 percent.
The Burmese Muslim community is largely a community of
traders and ulama who are economically well but with poor levels of human
resources development in the professional fields of education, science,
engineering, medicine, technology and business management. Yet, there are
several prominent law specialists among them.
As a hard and a difficult country, Myanmar was born out
of the ashes of the murder of its integrationist freedom fighter leader General
Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, he was assassinated on 19 July 1947 a
few months before the independence of Burma on 4 January 1948. His legacy of
seeking integration and the legacy of violence associated with his murder
alludes Myanmar until today.
