Religion in Asia

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Religion in Asia begins with a number: eleven. That is how many major religions historians trace to this single continent. They range from Judaism and Hinduism to Taoism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and the Baha'i Faith. Asia is the largest and most populous continent on Earth, and it is also home to Confucianism and Korean shamanism, alongside all these older traditions. New forms of belief keep emerging here, and the continent is known above all for the sheer diversity of its cultures. What explains how so many distinct systems of belief took root on one landmass? Which of them still commands hundreds of millions of followers today, and which survive only as fragments kept alive by a shrinking few?

• 2. Dharmic Roots

  ›

  Every religion born on the Indian subcontinent, from Hinduism to Sikhism, shares the same handful of core ideas: dharma, karma, and reincarnation. Each faith interprets them differently.

  About 1.26 billion people practice Hinduism, making it the largest religion in Asia, concentrated across South and Southeast Asia. More than 93% of the world's Hindu population lives in India alone, where Hindus make up 80% of the national population. In Nepal that figure reaches 85%, and on the island of Bali it climbs to 87%. Strong Hindu minorities also live across Bhutan, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. More live in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Afghanistan. As of 2020, India counted 1.10 billion Hindus, Nepal counted 23.5 million, and Bangladesh counted 14.5 million. Hinduism itself formed as a fusion, absorbing tribal cultures, folk religions, and tribal deities over time. Concepts such as karma, moksha, rebirth, renunciation, and samsara flowed into the Sramana traditions. That family includes Buddhism, Jainism, and older movements that predate both the Buddha and Mahavira.

  Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, founded Buddhism, now the fourth largest religion in the world and the third largest in Asia. About 12% of Asia's population follows it today. Buddhism holds a majority in Cambodia at 98%, Thailand at 95%, and Myanmar at 89%. It is also the majority faith in Tibet at 79%, Macau at 80%, and Bhutan at 75%. Sri Lanka follows at 70%, Laos at 67%, and Mongolia at 54%. In Japan, estimates for Buddhist adherence range from 20% to 36%, or as high as 67%, depending on the source. Large Buddhist populations also live in Taiwan at 35%, Singapore at 33%, Ladakh at 39.65%, and Sikkim at 27.39%. South Korea counts 22.9%, Malaysia 19.8%, Hong Kong 15%, North Korea 13.8%, Nepal 10.7%, Vietnam 10%, and China 4%. Strong Buddhist minorities also remain in India, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Russia. Before Islam's expansion, Buddhism had already been widely practiced across Central Asia, Afghanistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

  Vardhaman Mahavir and 23 other Tirthankaras form the doctrinal foundation of Jainism, an Indian religion practiced mostly within the country. Jains hold the highest literacy rate of any religious community in India, and the country's Jain libraries rank among its oldest institutions. Their influence reaches into India's ethical, political, and economic life, even though Jainism has traditionally stayed confined to the subcontinent. Increasingly, Jain communities are also found spreading throughout the wider world.

  Guru Nanak Dev founded Sikhism as a monotheistic religion in the 1500s, rooted in the Punjab region of the northern Indian subcontinent. With about 30 million adherents worldwide, it ranks as the fifth largest organized religion, and one of the fastest growing. The word Sikh itself comes from the Sanskrit shishya, meaning disciple or learner, or shiksha, meaning instruction. This tradition of religious philosophy is traditionally called Gurmat, the counsel of the gurus, or Sikh Dharm. Sikhism ranks as the 4th largest religion in India, where 2% of the population identifies as Sikh. Large Sikh communities also live in Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Together they carry Punjab's teachings far beyond the subcontinent where these Dharmic traditions began.

• 3. Abrahamic Threads

  ›

  Israel is 75.6% Jewish, home to a nominal Jewish population of about 6.1 million people, the demographic core of Judaism in Asia. Beyond Israel, small Jewish diaspora communities remain in Palestine at 432,800, Turkey at 17,400, and Azerbaijan at 9,100. Smaller communities remain in Iran at 8,756, India at 5,000, and Uzbekistan at 4,000.

  Jesus of Nazareth stands at the center of Christianity, whom adherents believe to be the Christ prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. That prophecy is recorded in what Christians call the Old Testament. His life is chronicled in the New Testament, and both are bound into the Christian Bible. Worldwide, Christianity is the largest religion with about 2.4 billion followers, though in Asia it remains a widespread minority. Pew Research Center counted more than 286 million Christians in Asia in 2010. The Britannica Book of the Year 2014 put the figure closer to 364 million, about 8.5% of the continent's population. Only six territories in Asia are predominantly Christian. Asian Russia follows the Russian Orthodox Church, and Cyprus is predominantly Orthodox. The Philippines ranks as the third largest Roman Catholic nation in the world. Timor Leste is the most overwhelmingly Christian territory in Asia, 99.6% Christian and 97.6% Roman Catholic. Armenia was the first state in history to adopt Christianity as its official religion, and Georgia's population is 88.1% Christian. Christianity accounts for 29.2% of South Korea's population, or 54.5% of its religious population, making it the country's predominant faith. It also forms a large minority in Lebanon at 40%, Kazakhstan at 26%, Singapore at 18.3%, and Kyrgyzstan at 17%. In raw numbers, the Philippines counts 84 million Christians and China counts 68 million. India has 30 million, Indonesia 28 million, and South Korea 15 million. Vietnam counts 7 million, Kazakhstan 4.7 million, Georgia 4.6 million, and Armenia 3.2 million. Malaysia counts 2.6 million, while Japan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan each count about 2.5 million. Syria has 1.8 million, Sri Lanka 1.5 million, East Timor 1.2 million, and Taiwan about one million. Ancient communities of Middle Eastern and Arab Christians still live across Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. They number more than 3 million in West Asia. A further 3 million expatriate Christian workers live across the Arabian Peninsula.

  Muhammad, regarded by Muslims as God's last prophet, delivered the teachings and example, the Sunnah and hadith, that shape Islam alongside the Qur'an. The Qur'an itself is considered by adherents to be the verbatim word of God, or Allah. Islam is Asia's largest religion, with about 1.2 billion adherents, and the continent holds the majority of the world's Muslims. Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh are each home to more than 100 million Muslims, making South and Southeast Asia the most populous Muslim region. US government figures counted 20 million Muslims in China in 2006. Iran and Turkey are the largest non-Arab Muslim-majority countries in Western Asia. Pakistan and Bangladesh hold that position in South Asia, and Afghanistan and Uzbekistan hold it in Central Asia. Indonesia is 86% Muslim, the largest Muslim population anywhere in the world, while Pakistan is 97% Muslim, Bangladesh 89%, and Malaysia 65%. India's Muslim population makes up 14% of the country, about 200 million people, a share that grew alongside the pluralist outlook of native Indian religions. The Philippines counts roughly 6 to 12 million Muslims, some 6 to 11% of its population. Thailand's Muslims make up 4.6% of the population, about 3 million people, while Sri Lanka's Muslims make up 10%, about 2.5 million. Twenty-seven states across Asia hold Muslim majorities, including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Kuwait, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and the Maldives. Also included are Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon.

  Baha'u'llah founded the Baha'i Faith in Persia, known today as Iran, giving Asia an Abrahamic religion distinct from Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. India holds the largest national Baha'i population, between 1.7 and just over 2 million people, and is also home to the Lotus Temple. Vietnam and Malaysia both report Baha'i communities of about 1%, some 260,000 people, while Kazakhstan counts 25 Local Spiritual Assemblies. In Iran, the religion faces severe persecution, and in neighboring Turkmenistan it is effectively banned, with homes raided for Baha'i literature.

  Jethro of Midian is revered by the Druze as their spiritual founder and chief prophet, an ancestor of this Arabic-speaking group from Western Asia. Druze call themselves the People of Monotheism, Al-Muwahhidun. Their teachings draw on Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad and the sixth Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. Greek philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Zeno of Citium, also shaped Druze thought, though Druze do not identify as Muslims. Worldwide, between 800,000 and one million people practice the Druze faith, most of them in the Levant. The Institute of Druze Studies estimates 40-50% live in Syria, 30-40% in Lebanon, 6-7% in Israel, and 1-2% in Jordan. About 2% more are scattered across other countries in the Middle East. Lebanon's Druze make up about 5.2% of its population, some 250,000 people. Syria's Druze were estimated at 3.2% in 2010, about 700,000 people including residents of the Golan Heights. Israel counted 143,000 Druze in 2019, 1.6% of its population, while Jordan's Druze, about 32,000 people, make up 0.5% of its population.

  Further east, an entirely different family of traditions grew not around a single prophet or scripture. Instead it centered on family, ancestors, and harmony with the natural world.

• 4. East Asian Traditions

  ›

  Confucius lived from 551 to 479 BCE in ancient China, and the tradition he founded, Confucianism, still shapes family life across East Asia today. Shamanism and animism, older than any of these systems, are still practiced across most of the continent. Confucianism blends moral, social, political, philosophical, and religious concerns, expressed through practice and attitude rather than through formal institutions. Some East Asian states even adopted it as a state religion during certain periods of history. Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese diaspora communities have since carried Confucian values to every part of the world.

  Laozi is traditionally credited as the founder of Taoism, though whether he actually existed is commonly disputed among scholars. The Daodejing, the text attributed to him, is dated to the late 4th century BC. Taoism holds that the Tao, meaning Way or Path, is both the source and the driving force behind everything that exists. Yet it remains ultimately ineffable. As its founding line puts it, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." Its ethics vary by school but generally emphasize wu-wei, or action through non-action, alongside naturalness, simplicity, and spontaneity. It also stresses the Three Treasures: compassion, moderation, and humility. Significant Taoist communities remain in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and their diaspora abroad.

  Han Chinese communities have practiced folk religion as their main belief system for most of the civilization's history. It centers on the worship of Shen, deities and spirits that include nature gods, clan deities, city and national deities, cultural heroes, dragons, and ancestors. Institutional Taoism has often tried to assimilate or administer these local traditions, though more precisely Taoism grew out of folk religion and Chinese philosophy. About 454 million people practice Chinese folk religion, roughly 6.6% of the world's population. More than 30% of people within China follow folk religion or Taoism.

  Japan's Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, written in the 7th and 8th centuries, contain the earliest recorded practices of Shinto, known in Japanese as Kami-no-michi. Those earliest texts describe disorganized folklore, history, and mythology rather than one unified religion. Today Shinto shrines serve purposes ranging from war memorials to harvest festivals, romance, and historical commemoration. Shinto is Japan's largest religion, practiced by nearly 80% of the population. Yet surveys from 2006 and 2008 found only 3% to 3.9% identify as members of Shinto sects.

  A mudang, usually a woman, acts as intermediary between spirits and human beings within Musok, or Korean Shamanism. The tradition is also called Sinism, or Shingyo, and encompasses indigenous beliefs practiced across the Korean people, the Korean sphere, and its diaspora. Shamans hold gut, or services, to bring good fortune, exorcise harmful spirits, propitiate local gods, or guide the dead toward higher realms. Once a fading minority faith, Musok has seen a resurgence in recent years.

  About 45.3% of Vietnam's population follows Vietnamese folk religion, known locally as tin nguong dan gian Viet Nam or dao Luong. That makes it the country's largest religion. Rather than a single organized system, it consists of local worship traditions devoted to the than, spirits or gods tied to nature, community, or ancestry. Ancestral gods among them were often deified as heroic figures. Dao Mau, a distinct branch, gives special prominence to a pantheon of mother goddesses. Vietnam's government also classifies Caodaism as an indigenous religion, since it combines than worship with Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. It also draws on elements of Catholicism, Spiritism, and Theosophy.

  Long before Confucius or Laozi, a prophet in ancient Persia had already given the region one of its oldest revealed religions.

• 5. The Zoroastrian Legacy

  ›

  Zoroaster, also called Zarathustra in Avestan, founded Zoroastrianism sometime before the 6th century BC, giving the ancient Persian Empire its state religion. Zoroastrianism worships a single god, Ahura Mazda, exalted by Zoroaster as the supreme divine authority, a belief essentially synonymous with what is called Mazdaism. In Zoroastrian teaching, Ahura Mazda is entirely good. Evil, called druj, springs from a wholly separate source that works to destroy the good creation, known as asha. Mazda is not immanent in the world; instead the Amesha Spentas and other Yazatas reveal his works and receive the worship directed toward him. The Avesta stands as the religion's most important text, though a significant portion of it has been lost, leaving mostly its liturgies intact. What survives of the lost portions comes only through references and brief quotations, mainly in works written from the 9th to the 11th centuries. A 2004 estimate placed the total number of practicing Zoroastrians between 124,000 and 190,000, roughly half of them in India's Parsi and Irani communities. India's 2001 census counted 69,000 Zoroastrians, the largest number in Asia, while Iran's 2011 census counted about 25,000. By 2012, the count stood at 61,000 in India, between 15,000 and 22,271 in Iran, 1,900 across the Persian Gulf countries, and 372 in Singapore. That drop, from an empire's official faith to a headcount of a few hundred in Singapore, points toward a broader problem. Measuring belief itself gets harder once the categories start to shift.

• 6. The Unaffiliated

  ›

  A 2012 Pew Research Center survey found that about 21.2% of Asia's population is religiously unaffiliated, a category that includes agnostics and atheists. That unaffiliated group forms the outright majority in four places. North Korea stands at 71%, Japan at 57%, Hong Kong at 56%, and mainland China at 52%. Other sources put the non-religious share of China's population at 59%, though estimates run as high as 80% or as low as 30%. That range exists because Chinese respondents define religion differently. Some treat it as cultural custom, practiced for tradition's sake. Others treat it as a conscious belief in post-mortem salvation or reincarnation. A Dentsu survey found that 46% of Vietnamese people and 51% of Japanese people describe themselves as irreligious. That same gap sits between practicing a custom and professing a belief. It is what keeps any single count of Asia's faithful, and its faithless, from ever settling into one fixed number.