Home›Southeast Asia and Oceania›Principal Tradition OfBrowse ByPrincipal Tradition OfThis page groups sacred regions by their formal rank within one specific faith. Wikipedia notes that Jerusalem "is the holiest city in Judaism and Christianity and the third-holiest city in Islam (behind Mecca and Medina in the Arabian Peninsula)." Browsing by principal-tradition-of lets a visitor find every region holding the same rank within its faith.FactsPrincipal Tradition OfSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsDirectoryCategoryWell-attestedRegions 1Principal Tradition OfFilter Results6 entriesAdherents TodayAllPew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Buddhist population at 324 million as of 2020, about 4 percent of the world's population, down 19 million from 2010, the only major world religion measured to shrink in absolute numbers over that decade. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Christian population at 2.3 billion as of 2020, about 28.8 percent of the world's population, up 122 million from 2010 even as its share of world population fell. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Hindu population at nearly 1.2 billion as of 2020, up 126 million from 2010, with about 99 percent of the world's Hindus living in the Asia-Pacific region and roughly 95 percent in India alone. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Muslim population at 2.0 billion as of 2020, about 26 percent of the world's population, up from 1.7 billion in 2010 and growing about twice as fast as the world's population as a whole over that decade. (1)Adherents Today MaximumAll324,000,000 (1)1,200,000,000 (1)2,000,000,000 (1)2,300,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll324,000,000 (1)1,200,000,000 (1)2,000,000,000 (1)2,300,000,000 (1)Basis of the Membership FigureAllIndependent Survey (4)Scholarly or Demographic Estimate (4)Establishment StatusAllVaries by Province (4)Form of the ConfessionAllHinduism has no single creed and no central authority to issue one. Adherence centers on orthopraxy, correct ritual and social practice, rather than a shared confession, and schools agreeing on almost no metaphysical claim, including atheistic Samkhya and materialist Charvaka, are still counted within the tradition. A formula such as the Gayatri Mantra marks a school, not the whole of Hinduism. (1)Taking refuge in the Three Jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, functions as Buddhism's basic profession of faith. (1)The Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed are the two most widely shared credal statements across the branches of Christianity. (1)The shahada, the declaration that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger, is Islam's central creed and the first of the five pillars. (1)FounderAllJesus of Nazareth; the movement was organised by his followers after his death (1)Muslims hold Islam to be the restoration of the primordial religion rather than a new founding (1)None; Hinduism has no founder and no founding event (1)Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (1)The Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllCodified Obligation With Consequences (1)Customary Norm (2)Legal StatusAllArticle 9 of the Constitution of Sri Lanka (1978, as amended) states that the Republic shall give Buddhism the foremost place and that it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, while assuring to all religions the rights granted by Articles 10 and 14(1)(e). (1)Marriage Position DetailAllQur'an 4:3 states: "And if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphan girls then marry (other) women of your choice, two or three, or four." Classical and contemporary Sunni and Shia jurisprudence alike reads this as permitting, not requiring, a man to be married to up to four wives at one time, on two conditions: material justice between the wives, in spending, clothing, and time, which Qur'an 4:129 immediately qualifies by noting that perfect justice in feeling, as opposed to material treatment, is not humanly possible and so is not what is required; and the financial capacity to support each wife. Monogamy remains the ordinary practice for most Muslims worldwide; the ruling recognizes polygynous marriage as licit rather than mandating it. (1)Membership Figure As OfAll2010-01-01 (4)2011-01-27 (1)2011-12-19 (1)2012-12-18 (2)2020-01-01 (4)Membership Over TimeAllBy 2020, the same Pew study found the global Buddhist population had fallen further to 324 million (just over 4 percent of world population), a 5 percent decline over the decade, the only major religious group worldwide to shrink in absolute numbers, attributed to religious disaffiliation in East Asia and a comparatively low birth rate among Buddhist-majority populations. (1)By 2020, the same Pew study found the global Christian population had risen by 122 million to 2.3 billion, even as its share of world population fell from 31 percent to 28.8 percent, as Sub-Saharan Africa overtook Europe as home to the largest share of the world's Christians. (1)By 2020, the same Pew study found the global Hindu population had grown 12 percent to nearly 1.2 billion, remaining stable as a share of world population since non-Hindus grew at about the same rate; 99 percent of Hindus worldwide live in the Asia-Pacific region and about 95 percent in India alone. (1)By 2020, the same Pew study found the global Muslim population had grown 21 percent to 2.0 billion (26 percent of world population), growing twice as fast as the rest of the world's population over the decade, driven by Muslims having more children and a younger average age than members of any other major religion. (1)In its December 19, 2011 Global Christianity report, Pew Research Center estimated 2.18 billion Christians worldwide as of 2010, nearly a third of the estimated 6.9 billion global population, compiled from a country-by-country analysis of about 2,400 sources including censuses and nationally representative surveys. (1)In its December 2012 Global Religious Landscape study, Pew Research Center estimated about 1 billion Hindus worldwide as of 2010, 15 percent of the global population, while noting a lack of census or survey data on Hindu subgroups in most countries. (1)In its December 2012 Global Religious Landscape study, Pew Research Center estimated about 488 million Buddhists worldwide as of 2010, 7 percent of the global population, a figure the study notes includes members of groups that identify as Buddhist such as Soka Gakkai and Hoa Hao. (1)In its January 27, 2011 report, Pew Research Center estimated about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide as of 2010, 23.4 percent of the estimated 6.9 billion global population, compiled from roughly 1,500 sources across 232 countries and territories. (1)Pew's June 2025 update put its own 2010 Hindu estimate at a little under 1.1 billion, close to but modestly higher than the 2012 report's figure for the same year, a mild revision rather than the sharp divergence seen in the same pair of studies' Buddhist figures. (1)Pew's June 2025 update to its global religion modeling revised its own 2010 Christian estimate down slightly to 2.1 billion (31 percent of world population), a mild revision of the 2011 report's 2.18 billion figure for the same year, both recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. (1)Pew's June 2025 update to its global religion modeling revised its own 2010 Muslim estimate upward to 1.7 billion (24 percent of world population), a modest revision of the 2011 report's 1.6 billion figure for the same year, both recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. (1)Pew's June 2025 update to the same study revised its own 2010 Buddhist estimate sharply downward, to 343 million (just under 5 percent of world population), citing East Asian religious identity being deeply embedded with local folk religions, so many practitioners do not formally self-identify as Buddhist in survey terms. Both the 2012 report's 488 million and this 343 million figure describe the same year, 2010, under two different Pew methodologies, and are recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. (1)Origin AccountAllBuddhism traces its origin to the awakening of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, in the fifth century BCE in northern India. (1)Christianity traces its origin to the life, teaching, crucifixion and, in the faith of its adherents, resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in Roman Judea in the first century. (1)Hinduism has no single founder or founding event; scholars trace its roots to the blending of Vedic religion, brought by Indo-Aryan migration, with indigenous religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent over more than a millennium. (1)Islam traces its origin to the revelations received by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca and Medina in the early seventh century, collected as the Quran. (1)Origin PeriodAllNo founding event (1)The Ancestral Law belongs to a continuous occupation of the continent of at least 50,000 years (1)The Buddha's dates are contested (traditional 563-483 BCE, critical scholarship c. 480-400 BCE) (1)Origin Period End YearAll500 BCE (1)400 BCE (1)50 (1)632 (1)1300 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll-50,000 (1)1500 BCE (1)1000 BCE (1)500 BCE (1)30 (1)610 (1)Place of OriginAllRoman Judaea and Galilee, spreading through the eastern Mediterranean (1)The Australian continent and its islands (1)The Hijaz, in western Arabia: Mecca and Medina (1)The Indian subcontinent, chiefly the Indo-Gangetic plain (1)The islands of Polynesia, from Aotearoa to Hawaii and Rapa Nui (1)The middle Ganges plain of north-eastern India: Magadha and Kosala (1)Position on MarriageAllMarriage may licitly be polygynous (1)Position on SexualityAllSame-sex orientation or practice is held to bar full membership or participation (1)The body holds no single settled position; the question is actively and openly contested within it (1)Position on UsuryAllInterest of any kind on a loan is forbidden (1)Practice StatusAllClosed ceremonial knowledge, described but not reproduced (1)Living, and practised in varied local forms (2)Partly restricted: some elements are closed to outsiders (2)Sexuality Position DetailAllChristianity is governed by no single worldwide teaching authority, and its major bodies read at every point on this question today. The Roman Catholic Church's Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that homosexual acts are contrary to natural law while insisting that persons with homosexual tendencies must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity, and reserves marriage to a man and a woman. The Russian Orthodox Church's Basis of the Social Concept, adopted at its Jubilee Bishops Council in August 2000, names homosexuality a sinful distortion of human nature and bars anyone who promotes it as a norm from work with children or youth or from military or reformatory positions, reaching beyond ordination. The United Methodist Church, one of the tradition's largest global bodies, ended its forty-year ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage at its 2024 General Conference. The Anglican Communion, in its own 2022 Lambeth Conference Call on Human Dignity, states that its forty-two member provinces hold differing convictions and pastoral practices on this question, some blessing same-sex unions and others continuing to hold that marriage is exclusively the lifelong union of a man and a woman. No statement speaks for Christianity as a whole. (1)Classical Islamic jurisprudence treats homosexual acts, generally termed liwat in the legal literature, as unlawful across all four Sunni schools, though the schools differ on the exact legal category and punishment. The Shafi'i, Hanbali and main Maliki position hold the punishment mirrors that for zina under the hadd category, a fixed penalty applied only under strict evidentiary conditions such as four eyewitnesses or a clear confession; the Maliki school's own harshest reading holds both parties subject to execution regardless of marital status; the Hanafi school instead leans toward a discretionary punishment, ta'zir, set by a judge rather than a fixed hadd penalty, on the reasoning that the specific evidentiary threshold hadd requires was not met by the available textual evidence. Across all four schools, the same-sex attraction itself is treated as distinct from the act and is not, on its own, held to be sinful; the legal rulings address conduct. (1)Standard Rate ExpectedAllTwo and a half percent. (1)Standing Giving ExpectationAllDana, giving, is a shared ethical foundation across the Buddhist tradition, asked of every lay follower with no fixed rate or amount, in explicit contrast to a percentage-based tithe. A Buddhist Publication Society compilation of Pali Canon teaching on dana, already cited on this axis for the Theravada school fact, states that a gift's merit rests chiefly on the giver's intention rather than the gift's size. Each of the tradition's major branches, already recorded individually on this axis, carries its own documented expression of the same no-fixed-rate ethic: Theravada's daily almsround supporting monastics, Mahayana's dana paramita as one of the perfections and its historic role financing temple institutions, and Vajrayana's ngondro mandala offering, a formally counted practice with a set numerical target rather than an open-ended one. This religion-level fact records the shared ethic those three branch-level facts already document in its own tradition-specific detail. (1)Dana, giving, is not a single uniform rule in Hindu tradition but a textual category examined at length across dharmashastra literature. Maria Heim's academic study Theories of the Gift in South Asia traces how thinkers writing across roughly 1100 to 1300 CE debated whether a gift is fully voluntary or carries an obligatory dimension, a live question precisely because the dharmashastra sources themselves classify gifts along a spectrum running from daily, expected household giving to occasional, circumstance-bound giving and freely chosen giving, without resolving which end of that spectrum binds an ordinary householder. Dakshina, the gift or fee traditionally owed an officiating priest at the close of a ritual, sits at the more expected end of the same spectrum: its Vedic root, traced to a fee due the priest, originally a cow, makes it read as more customary and completion-bound than a purely charitable dana, though its scale is set by custom and the giver's own means rather than by any stated rate. Hinduism has no single hierarchical body, no synod and no magisterium, that could codify either dana or dakshina into a binding rule with a stated percentage or a stated penalty for falling short; what the textual and scholarly record shows is a customary norm of long standing, carried by tradition and ritual expectation rather than by institutional enforcement. (1)Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, obliges a Muslim whose accumulated wealth exceeds a minimum threshold (nisab) to give 2.5 percent of that qualifying wealth annually. The Quran (9:60) names eight categories of recipients. In several Muslim-majority countries zakat is collected by the state itself rather than left to the individual, giving the obligation a legal as well as a religious force there; elsewhere it is a personal duty of conscience understood to be as central to Islamic practice as prayer and fasting. (1)Status TodayAllLiving tradition, practised today (6)Supreme BeingAllAllah, God, held to be one and without partner or equal. (1)Hindu theology ranges from devotion to a single supreme deity, most often Vishnu or Shiva depending on the tradition, to a broader vision in which many deities are held to be manifestations of a single underlying reality, Brahman. (1)The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one being in three persons. (1)TheologyAllAncestor-centred (2)Monistic: one ultimate reality behind all appearance (1)Monotheistic: one God (2)Non-theistic: no creator god is central (1)Panentheistic: the divine both within the world and beyond it (1)Polytheistic: many gods (2)Transgression CategoryAllAdharma, action contrary to one's dharma or to cosmic and moral order, is the broad Hindu category of wrongdoing. (1)Akl mal al-yatim: consuming the wealth of an orphan. (1)Al-tawalli yawm al-zahf: fleeing from the battlefield. (1)Byapada: ill will, the second of the Five Hindrances. (1)Dvesha (dosa): hatred or aversion, the second of the Three Poisons. (1)Kama-chanda: sensory desire, the first of the Five Hindrances (pancha nivarana) to meditative clarity. (1)Moha: delusion, or ignorance of the true nature of things, the third and most fundamental of the Three Poisons. (1)Qadhf: slandering chaste, believing women with unchastity. (1)Qatl al-nafs: killing a soul that Allah has forbidden, except by right. (1)Raga (lobha): greed, craving or attachment, the first of the Three Poisons said to bind beings to samsara. (1)Riba: consuming usury or interest. (1)Shirk: associating partners with Allah, the first and gravest of the Seven Destructive Sins (as-sab al-mubiqat). (1)Sihr: magic or sorcery. (1)Sin, understood as thought, word, deed or omission contrary to the will of God, ranging in Catholic moral theology from venial to mortal sin. (1)Thina-middha: sloth and torpor, the third of the Five Hindrances. (1)Uddhacca-kukkucca: restlessness and worry, the fourth of the Five Hindrances. (1)Vicikiccha: doubt, the fifth of the Five Hindrances. (1)Usury Position DetailAllThe Quran's treatment of riba came in stages rather than all at once. An early Meccan verse, Surah Al-Rum 30:39, contrasted interest unfavorably with charity as moral guidance, without yet imposing a legal ban. After the migration to Medina the tone sharpened: Surah Al-Nisa 4:161 rebukes an earlier community for taking interest despite being forbidden it, and Surah Al-Imran 3:130, revealed after the Battle of Uhud, specifically condemns compounding interest. The final and complete prohibition, covering interest of any kind, came in Surah Al-Baqarah 2:275-281, revealed near the end of the Prophet's life and describing persistence in the practice as tantamount to war against God and His messenger. This is why contemporary Islamic finance avoids interest bearing loans altogether, structuring transactions instead as profit and loss sharing partnerships or cost-plus sales. (1)BrowseCompareAustralian Aboriginal ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryBuddhismPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryChristianityPrincipal Tradition Of6 entriesHinduismPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryIslamPrincipal Tradition Of2 entriesPolynesian ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of2 entriesSources1. 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