The Associated Press
April 28 — Following is a list of countries with significant Muslim minority populations:
THAILAND: Muslims comprise about 5 percent, or 3.1 million of Thailand's population of 62 million. They have long complained of discrimination in jobs and education in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, Thailand's only Muslim-majority provinces. Alienation caused by the central government's policies has been the source of a decades-old separatist struggle.
INDIA: The country's 150 million Muslims nearly 14 percent of the population of 1.1 billion makes India home to more Muslims than any other country but Indonesia. Periodic riots between Muslims and the country's dominant Hindus have killed thousands over the years. In 2002, at least 1,000 Muslims were killed by Hindu mobs and more than 100,000 fled their homes in Gujarat state after 58 Hindus were killed by Muslims on a train in Godhra.
PHILIPPINES: Muslims represent about 5 percent of the country's population of 85 million people. There are two main Muslim separatist groups. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has been fighting for self-rule in the south for more than two decades and has agreed to peace talks with the government to be held in Malaysia, although no date has been set. The Abu Sayyaf has a 13-year history of kidnappings-for-ransom and beheadings and envisions turning a string of southern islands into an Islamic enclave.
CHINA: About 50 million Muslims comprise just under 4 percent of China's 1.3 billion people. They are concentrated in the southwestern province of Xinjiang, where opponents of Beijing's rule say the government represses them and is sending millions of ethnic Han Chinese from the east to cement its political and cultural control over the region.
SRI LANKA: Muslims number 1.3 million, or about 7 percent of the country's population of 18.6 million. Muslims have been the target of systematic killings at the hands of the country's rebel Tamil Tigers, who are Hindus. Muslims remain marginalized in a country dominated by Buddhist Sinhalese. In 1990, 130 Muslims were massacred at two mosques.
SINGAPORE: About 15 percent of its 4 million people are Muslims. A ban on traditional Muslim head scarves at schools caused an uproar in multiracial Singapore in 2003. The tiny city-state has adopted a strong-arm approach to terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, locking up scores of suspected terrorists under a security law that allows indefinite detention without trial.
MYANMAR: Muslims make up about 4 percent of Myanmar's 53 million people, most of whom are Buddhist. In the early 1990s, around 250,000 Muslims from the northwestern Rakhine state fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape alleged religious persecution by the ruling junta. Most of the refugees have since returned under a U.N.-sponsored program.
CAMBODIA: Approximately 600,000 Muslims, mainly part of the Cham ethnic group, make up less than 5 percent of the primarily Buddhist country's 13 million people. The Cham are among the country's poorest people. The government is concerned the Cham minority has ties to Muslim terror groups, specifically Jemaah Islamiyah, but has been unable to uncover specific links.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040428_1114.htmlAnyone have the latest info on the thwarted chem attack in Jordan? News report said it could have killed 80,000 people. Further reports said the bomb was made in a particular way to spread the chemicals rather then the blast incinerating them. I found that tidbit of info rather disturbing.
If our enemies have mastered this type of bomb, I'm going to go get plastic sheeting today. I'm going to speak with building security to see if they have a plan to deal with this.