bangladeshi mosque .

angladesh has the seventh largest population of any country in the world. It has almost as many people as Pakistan, the sixth most populated country. But Bangladesh is much smaller than Pakistan. In fact, five countries the size of Bangladesh could fit inside Pakistan! The large population and small size of Bangladesh make it an extremely crowded place to live.
Muslim Mosque
Muslim Mosque

Roughly 83% of the people in Bangladesh are Muslims. This makes Islam the most common religion by far. To understand why so many Muslims live in Bangladesh we need to take a look at history. During the 1800s, Great Britain ruled almost all of South Asia as a colony. (Did you know that the United States used to be made up of British colonies also?) In other words, the separate nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh did not exist at that time. This changed in 1947 when South Asia gained its independence, or freedom, from Britain.

Since most people in South Asia were Hindus, many Muslims in the region worried that they would be treated unfairly in a country where they were a minority. Therefore, they formed the nation of Pakistan and many Muslims throughout South Asia went to live there. The division of South Asia into the nations of India and Pakistan is called “The Partition.”

Initially, Pakistan was divided into an eastern and a western section, since these were the areas where most people were Muslims. However, in 1971 the eastern section of Pakistan broke away and became the independent nation of Bangladesh.

Many Hindus who lived in what is now Bangladesh did not want to live in a country where they were the minority. So during “The Partition” they moved to India. Although many Hindus left Bangladesh, many other Hindus chose not to leave. These Hindus still live in Bangladesh. Today, about 16% of all Bangladeshis are Hindus. This means that 99% of the population in Bangladesh is either Muslim or Hindu. There are also small groups of Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists, but they are a very small part of the total population.