Muslim

The Muslim population of the Subcontinent is now more than 350 million. Muslim is the name given to followers of Islam. Islam began in the Arabian peninsula in 778 A.D. By the tenth century, there were Muslim populations in the Subcontinent who had arrived from the northwest as traders and as conquerors (see also Moghul). Both Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim countries (with less than 5 percent of their populations non-Muslim), as are the Maldives, the island nation off the coast of Sri Lanka. India has more Muslims than any other country in the Subcontinent, about 130 million, though they are a minority (about 12 percent of the total population). The Muslim population and culinary culture in India are particularly dominant in places that had Muslim rulers before Independence in 1947; these include Hyderabad, Lucknow, Delhi, and Agra. But, in fact, in most towns and all cities in India, and in Sri Lanka, there are sizable Muslim populations. There is a long history of peaceful coexistence between different religious communities in India, but also examples, up to the present day, of violent confrontation between Hindus and Muslims, such as the killings in Gujarat in 2000 and the disputes and violence associated with the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in 1992.