Islam by country · Asia
Islam in Cambodia: history and Muslim population data
Explore CoMPS research on the historical journey of Islam in Cambodia, alongside population data and an interactive timeline.
Open Cambodia in the interactive map
History of Islam in Cambodia
The Kingdom of Cambodia has an area of 181,035 sq km and its map ispresented in Figure 2.4.2. It was occupied by France in 1863 and becamepart of French Indochina in 1887. It gained its independence from Francein 1953. Between 1975 and 1979, the country was under the rule of theCommunist Khmer Rouge who executed at least 1.5 million people, aconsiderable percentage of which were Muslim.
Islam entered these lands around 674 through Arab traders duringthe time of Caliph Othman bnu Affan. However, influenced by theMalay, the ethnic Cham embraced Islam in masse between the eleventhand thirteenth centuries. As shown in Table 2.4.2, estimate of the Muslimpopulation based on ethnic Malay and Cham increased from 59,000 or2.4% in 1921, to 68,000 or 2.4% in 1931, to 73,000 or 2.4% in 1936. Censusdata on religion was introduced in 1998, which indicate that the Muslimpopulation increased in number but decreased in percentage from245,000 or 2.2% in 1998, to 257,000 or 1.9% in 2008 and 318,000 or 2.0% in2019. Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will increase byone-tenth of a percentage point per decade; then the Muslim populationis expected to be around half a million in the second half of this century,reaching 2.3% by 2050 and 2.8% by the end of this century.
Historical Muslim population dataset for Cambodia
The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.
| Year | Total population (thousands) | Muslim population (thousands) | Muslim share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 2,828 | 65.04 | 2.30% |
| 2000 | 12,010 | 258.2 | 2.15% |
| 2100 | 19,162 | 536.5 | 2.80% |
For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.