Bangladesh

Seceded from Pakistan after the 1971 war; Bengal was Islamised largely through Sufi preachers under the Bengal Sultanate and Mughal rule, yielding today's Sunni-Ḥanafī majority — one of the largest Muslim populations on earth.

☾ The Coming of Islam

Sufi preachers and the Islamisation of Bengal

Islam came to Bengal with the early-13th-century Muslim conquest, but its spread among the population is widely attributed to Sufi preachers and saints, whose shrines dot the delta. Under the Bengal Sultanate and then Mughal rule, an expanding agrarian economy in the east drew Muslim settlers and carried Islam into the countryside.

The role of Sufism in Bengal's conversion is emphasised in the standard scholarly accounts.

☾ Religious Composition

A Sunni-Ḥanafī majority of great size

Bangladesh is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, following the Ḥanafī school, with a significant Hindu minority and smaller Buddhist and Christian communities. It holds one of the largest Muslim populations of any country.

Demographic shares are approximate.

▤ Scholars & Institutions

A syncretic and pluralistic Muslim culture

Muslim rule in Bengal fostered a society that sources describe as pluralistic and, in places, syncretic: Sufi devotion, saint-veneration and interaction with local Hindu traditions shaped a distinctive Bengali Islam alongside more orthodox currents.

The degree of syncretism in Bengali Islam is described differently across scholarly and reformist accounts.

At a glance