Muslim People Groups of Southeast Asia
Of East Asia’s 2.2 billion people, over 12% or more than 260 million people claim they are Muslim. The largest Muslim country in population is in East Asia: Indonesia. But one can find Muslims all the way from Mongolia to Indonesia, and from Myanmar to Japan. These Muslims are culturally more diverse than their Middle-Eastern counterparts. There are more than 220 different ethnic groups in East Asia which are majority Muslim, with many shades of practice and identity in Islam.
Muslim ministry has been part of OMF International’s history for more than 100 years, both as practitioners and missiologists. In 1906 George W. Hunter of the China Inland Mission (CIM) set up base in Urumqi. Called the "apostle of Turkestan" by author Mildred Cable, he ministered among the Uyghur, Kazakh and other Muslim people groups in China.
For the World Missionary Congress in Edinburgh in 1910, CIM author and editor Marshall Broomhall wrote a 332 page report called “Islam in China, a neglected problem.” Marshall Broomhall was also an associate editor for Samuel M. Zwemer’s magazine “The Moslem World.”
William W. Borden attended that Edinburgh conference. “Borden of Yale,” as he became known, was accepted by the CIM to work among the Muslims of Gansu province, but passed away in Cairo from spinal meningitis in 1913 while learning Arabic. (Samuel Zwemer led his funeral.)
Co-founded by CIM worker GK Harris “The Society of Friends of the Moslems in China” existed from 1927 to 1952 and had many contributions from CIM workers. Samuel Zwemer’s daughter Elizabeth and her husband Claude Pickens were among the CIM workers among the Hui. Together with Zwemer they made surveys of the Muslims of China’s Northwest in the 1930’s. In 1946 GK Harris wrote the well-known “How to Lead Moslems to Christ” with a foreword by Samuel Zwemer.
After the reluctant exodus from China with the communist takeover in 1951, a good number of OMF International workers have continued reaching out to Muslims. About 12% or 260 million people of East Asia are Muslim today. More than 25 teams and over 130 members with OMF International today are on the ground pioneering to reach East Asia Muslims.
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