Every Muslim-majority country, and how it got that way

Nearly every Muslim-majority country on earth was something else first, and the record of what it was and how it stopped being that is not obscure. It is in the chronicles of the states that did it, which described their campaigns as conquests because that is what they were proud of.

The table below is the ledger. “Before” is the dominant religion or civilisation displaced. “How” is the mechanism, and it differs by region: the core was taken by field armies, the Indian Ocean rim by merchants and converting rulers.

The Arab core and the Levant

Country	Before	When	By whom	How
Saudi Arabia	Arabian polytheism, Jewish and Christian tribes	622-633	Muhammad, then Abu Bakr	Campaigns in the Hijaz, expulsion and destruction of the Jewish tribes, then the Ridda wars against tribes that tried to leave
Iraq	Zoroastrian Sassanid state, Church of the East, the Babylonian Jewish academies	633-651	Rashidun	Conquest, decided at Qadisiyyah, 636
Syria	Byzantine Christian	634-638	Rashidun	Conquest, decided at Yarmouk, 636
Jordan	Byzantine Christian	634-636	Rashidun	Conquest
Lebanon	Byzantine and Maronite Christian	634-638	Rashidun	Conquest, with a Christian majority surviving into the twentieth century
Israel and the Palestinian territories	Jewish, Samaritan, Byzantine Christian	636-638	Rashidun	Conquest, Jerusalem surrendered 637
Egypt	Coptic Christian	639-642	Amr ibn al-As, Rashidun	Conquest, Copts still roughly a tenth of the population
Yemen	Jewish, Christian, polytheist	630s	Muhammad and Rashidun	Submission then conquest; the Jewish community lasted until 1949-50
Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait	Arabian polytheism, Nestorian Christian	630s-640s	Rashidun	Submission and conquest

North Africa

Country	Before	When	By whom	How
Libya	Christian and Berber	643-647	Rashidun	Conquest
Tunisia	Christian, the Latin church of Carthage	647-698	Umayyad	Fifty years of campaigning ending in the destruction of Carthage; the African church was extinguished
Algeria	Christian and Berber	680-708	Umayyad	Conquest against sustained Berber resistance, including the Kahina’s revolt
Morocco	Christian, Jewish and Berber	680-710	Umayyad	Conquest, then Idrisid state
Mauritania	Berber and Soninke	11th century	Almoravids	Conquest by a Saharan movement that then invaded Spain; slavery persisted to 1981
Sudan	Christian Nubia, the kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia	652-1504	Rashidun treaty, then Arab migration and the Funj	Held out for seven centuries under the baqt treaty before collapsing; Christian Nubia is gone
Somalia, Djibouti	traditional religion, Christian Aksumite influence	7th-13th centuries	Arab and Persian settlement, then sultanates	Trade settlement and later conquest

Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus

Country	Before	When	By whom	How
Iran	Zoroastrian	633-651	Rashidun	Conquest; the Sassanid state abolished, Zoroastrians now about twenty thousand
Afghanistan	Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Hindu	642-870s	Rashidun then Saffarid	Conquest over two centuries; the Bamiyan Buddhas stood until the Taliban destroyed them in 2001
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan	Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Nestorian Christian, Manichaean	705-715	Qutayba ibn Muslim, Umayyad	Conquest of Bukhara and Samarkand
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan	Tengrist and Buddhist Turkic	8th-14th centuries	Arab conquest at the edge, then Turkic dynastic conversion	Mixed: conquest at Talas 751, conversion of the steppe khanates later
Azerbaijan	Zoroastrian and Caucasian Albanian Christian	7th-8th centuries	Rashidun and Umayyad	Conquest
Turkey	Byzantine Christian, Greek and Armenian	1071-1453	Seljuks then Ottomans	Conquest beginning at Manzikert; Christians a fifth of Anatolia in 1914, under one per cent today

South Asia

Country	Before	When	By whom	How
Pakistan (Sindh)	Hindu and Buddhist	711	Muhammad bin Qasim, Umayyad	Conquest
Pakistan (Punjab, Northwest)	Hindu and Buddhist	1000-1200s	Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Delhi Sultanate	Conquest and raiding; Mahmud of Ghazni sacked Somnath in 1026
Bangladesh	Hindu and Buddhist	1204	Bakhtiyar Khalji	Conquest of Bengal, then Sufi settlement
Maldives	Buddhist	1153	conversion of the king	Dynastic conversion, then compulsory for subjects

Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean rim

Country	Before	When	By whom	How
Indonesia	Hindu-Buddhist, the Majapahit world	13th-16th centuries	Gujarati and Persian merchants, Sufi teachers, converting rulers	Trade and preaching, no conquering army
Malaysia	Hindu-Buddhist and animist	15th century	the Malacca sultanate	Trade and the conversion of the ruling house
Brunei	animist and Hindu-Buddhist	15th century	the sultanate	Dynastic conversion
Comoros	traditional and Bantu	10th-15th centuries	Arab and Shirazi settlement	Trade settlement

West and Sahelian Africa

Country	Before	When	By whom	How
Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea	traditional West African religion	9th-13th centuries, deepened 18th-19th	Trans-Saharan merchants, then jihad states	Trade first, then the Fulani jihads imposed it as state religion
Niger, Burkina Faso, northern Nigeria	traditional religion	11th century, then 1804	Kanem-Bornu, then Usman dan Fodio	Trade and courts, then jihad: the Sokoto Caliphate ran on slave raiding until 1903
Chad	traditional religion, Christian Nubian influence	11th-16th centuries	Kanem-Bornu	Dynastic conversion and slave raiding of the south
Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau	traditional religion	17th-19th centuries	Fulani and Mandinka jihads	Conquest and conversion

What the ledger shows

Almost nothing on this list was empty. Zoroastrian Persia, Christian Egypt, Christian North Africa, Christian Nubia, Buddhist Central Asia, Hindu Sindh, Christian Anatolia, Jewish Arabia and Yemen. Every row is a civilisation that ended or became a remnant, and in most cases the remnant is still there and still under pressure: Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Iraq, Zoroastrians in Iran, Yazidis in Sinjar, Christians in Pakistan under blasphemy law.

The mechanism splits cleanly by geography. The countries taken by armies are the countries where the great pre-Islamic civilisations were. The countries converted by merchants are the ones at the end of the trade routes, where there was no imperial rival to defeat. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country on earth and it is in the second group, which is the strongest single fact available to the other side and belongs on this page in bold.

The dates are not all medieval. The Sokoto Caliphate was founded in 1804 and raided for slaves until 1903. Mauritania criminalised slavery in 2007. The last caliphate fell in 1924, which is inside the lifetime of people who were alive when this project started.

And the argument this defeats is the one about Israel. A Jewish state re-established in 1948 on the land where Jews are the continuous indigenous population is called a colonial imposition, by states whose borders were drawn by seventh-century cavalry, whose majority religion arrived with those armies, and whose own indigenous minorities are the remnants in the table above.