Islam in Oceania

History of Islam in Oceania

Oceania consists of tens of thousands of islands with total land area of8.54 million square kilometers, over 90% of which is mainland Australia;spread over eighty million square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean. Thetotal population of this continent increased from 1.5 million in 1810, tothree million in 1870, to six million in 1900, to twelve million in 1950, to44 million in 2020, and is projected to approach sixty million by 2050,and seventy million by 2100. Therefore, it is the least populated continentin the world. A plot of decennial estimates of the Muslim population andits percentage with respect to the total population in Oceania from 1900to 2100 is provided in Figure 6.0a. Muslims entered Oceania as early asthe sixteenth century as Islam spread through current Indonesia.However, until 1950s the number of Muslims remained few. Remarkablepresence of Muslims started in 1960s with migration of Muslims foreconomic means mainly to Australia. Noticeable increase of Muslims inother parts of this continent started in 1990s, such as New Zealand,Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau A substantial increase in the number and percentage of Muslims is expected throughout this century.

Thus, the Muslim population in this continent has likely increasedfrom none in 1800, to 6,000 or 0.1% in 1900, to 0.4 million or 1.3% in 2000,to one million or 2.3% in 2020, and is projected to reach 2.5 million or4.4% by 2050 and five million or 7.3% by 2100.

We divided Oceania into four regions; the data for each is included ina separate section and are sorted in terms of the percentage of Muslimsin descending order. These regions are Australasia (Section 6.1),Melanesia (Section 6.2), Micronesia (Section 6.3), and Polynesia (Section6.4). In Section 6.5, the total population in each of the four regions ofOceania and the corresponding percentage and number of Muslims ispresented centennially in Table 6.5a from 600 to 2100 and decennially inTables 6.5b to 6.5c from 1790 to 2100.