Bengali Muslim
Muslim-majority districts of Bengal highlighted in green on a map in 1909
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 186,000,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Bangladesh
|
146,000,000 (2011) |
 India
|
35,300,000 (2011) |
 Pakistan
|
2,200,000 (2011) |
 Saudi Arabia
|
1,200,000 (2010) |
 UAE
|
700,000 (2013) |
 Malaysia
|
500,000 (2009) |
 UK
|
377,126 (2011) |
 Kuwait
|
230,000 (2008) |
 Oman
|
200,000 (2010) |
 Qatar
|
150,000 (2014) |
 USA
|
143,619 (2007) |
 Italy
|
115,746 (2013) |
| Languages | |
| Bengali with different dialects | |
Bengali Muslims are an ethnic, linguistic, and religious population who make up the majority of Bangladesh's citizens and the largest minority in the Indian states of West Bengal , Assam and Tripura.Ethnic Bengalis who adhere to Islam, they speak the Bengali language, which is written with the indigenous Bengali alphabet. They form the second largest Muslim ethnolinguistic group in the world (after Arab Muslims).
Bengal was a leading power of the medieval Islamic East. The Bengali Muslim population emerged as a synthesis of Islamic and Bengali cultures. After the Partition of India in 1947, they comprised the demographic majority of Pakistan until the independence of East Pakistan (historic East Bengal) as Bangladesh in 1971.
A Bengali is a person of ethnic and linguistic heritage from the Bengal region in South Asia. The region was historically separated from India by the mighty Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, allowing the Bengali people to develop an independent language and culture. Islam arrived in the first millennium and greatly influenced Bengali culture and civilization. The influx of Persian, Turkic, Arab and Mughal settlers further added to the rich cultural melting pot of Bengal. However, historians including Richard Maxwell Eaton, Ahmed Sharif, Muhammad Mohar Ali and Jadunath Sarkar are in agreement that the bulk of Muslims are descended from lower caste Hindus who were converted to Islam by missionaries. Today, most Bengali Muslims live in the modern state of Bangladesh, the world's third largest Muslim-majority country the Indian state of West Bengal and Assam.
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Wikipedia