Laos Muslim Population Article

Laos

Muslims are a small minority in this Buddhist majority country. Muslims are visible in the capital, Vientiane, that also has a Jama Masjid. The Muslim population is mostly engaged in trade and manage meat shops. A small community of Cham Muslims from Cambodia who escaped the Khmer Rouge is also found. Muslims live primarily in urban areas.

2. Laos: Muslims ostracized from world
[By International Islamic News Agency (IINA)]

Muslims in Laos are completely ostracized and oblivious of the wider Muslim world, and they are extremely poor. Laos has a population of 5.6 million, and area of 91,400 square kilometers, and is sandwiched between China, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam, with its capital, Vientiane. Some of its commodities include wood, minerals and agricultural products, such as grains, coffee beans, cotton, and vegetables. Many of Laos' Muslims hail from Cambodia, after fleeing the massacres that were taking place in that country, in the hands of the Khmer Rouge Government, though others come from different other countries. Some preachers from Pakistan had come to Laos to teach the Muslims matters relating to their faith.

3. The Crescent in Laos: Muslims of Vientiane
[By Text copyright © Andrew Forbes / CPA 2001]

Although civilization in land-locked Laos is likely more than 6000 years old, the country remains little-known outside Southeast Asia. It is only in recent years that this overwhelmingly Buddhist land, roughly the size of England and layered with fading veneers of both French colonialism and communism, has begun to open, gradually, to outsiders. Its capital, Vientiane, is also home to one of Southeast Asia's smallest Muslim communities. Living within national borders drawn by the French at the end of the 19th century, roughly half of Laos's population of four million is ethnic Lao, known locally as Lao Lum, close kin to the inhabitants of adjacent Northeast Thailand. These are the people of the Mekong Valley lowlands who are the majorities both in Vientiane and in Luang Prabang, the pre-colonial royal capital, and who have also traditionally dominated Lao government and society.

With a population of less than seven million, Laos is one of the smallest countries in South-East Asia. Besides being one of the poorest countries in the world, Laos has the dubious distinction of being the world's most heavily bombed country. From 1960 to 1973, the USA, in its brutal undeclared war against Laos, dropped over three million tons of bombs across the country, mainly on civilian targets, causing untold death and destruction.