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Religion and History in Suriname

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Religion and History in Suriname

No country in the Americas is as evenly divided among religions as Suriname, and the division was assembled by Dutch labour recruitment over two centuries. Moravian missionaries began work in 1735 and Catholic missions followed, so the Afro Surinamese and indigenous populations are largely Christian. Indentured labourers were brought from British India from 1873, bringing Hindus and Muslims, and from Java from 1890, bringing Javanese Muslims. Chinese immigration added further communities. The Muslim share of the population is the highest of any country in the western hemisphere.

Paramaribo makes the point physically. The Neveh Shalom synagogue and the Keizerstraat mosque stand next to one another on the same street, sharing a car park, and the arrangement is used domestically and internationally as an image of what the country is.

One Javanese Surinamese practice deserves recording because it is unique. Some Javanese mosques in Suriname face west rather than east. The direction of Mecca from Java is west, and the first generation continued to orient their prayer that way after crossing the Atlantic, where the correct direction is east. When the discrepancy was raised the community divided over whether to follow the geography or the inherited practice, and the split has never fully closed, so both orientations exist.

The Maroon peoples, descended from those who escaped the plantations and established independent societies in the interior, principally the Saramaka and the Ndyuka, maintain Winti, an Afro Surinamese religion of ancestral and nature spirits. It was legally prohibited until 1971.

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