Religions in Southeast Asia

I'm from Vietnam, which is one of the key member countries making up Southeast Asia and a lesser known country of the big East of Asia. Most of the members here are from Canada and the U.S so I think it might be a bit enlightening to have a good view of what's like to be religious/not religious in Asia.

Even within Southeast Asia, influence of religion is very diverse and varies from country to country. In Vietnam, the traditional and national choice of religion has been Buddhism, which is, I can safely say, one of the more tolerant moderate religions in the world. Buddhism is a bit strange to me because it supports temperance in all matters and engagements. You, for example, as an adherent, are not required to attend religious services once a week. There are also, in my opinion, significantly fewer important ceremonies with pomp and circumstance compared to Christianity. Buddhism has a very strong message of forgiveness and tolerance I believe. They have never historically exerted any political impact on the reign of kings throughout different phases of Vietnamese history and the monarchy never consulted or regarded their advice with much weight.

Communism was then introduced to my country under the French colonization. They, as many of you know, are against religious doctrines and influence (I guess because it makes it easier for them to disseminate Communist propaganda). Many of the earlier Vietnamese Catholic priests got beheaded and executed for not forsaking their faith by the Communist Party. It would be fascinating for all of you to know that the French priests were the original inventors of the Vietnamese language nowadays. Vietnamese have alphabet letters with some small tweaks here and there.

At any rate Christianity began to flourish in the South of Vietnam, which was subjected to American influence. A lot of those people who fled Vietnam at the fall of Saigon were Christian families.

I believe at the moment Christians only make up 10% of the overall population. All of us, regardless of personal religious attachments, believe in karma and all pay homage to our ancestors (deceased grandmothers and fathers). A huge percentage of Vietnamese, maybe even the majority, is NON-religious or very loosely attached to Buddhism. However, a lot us have very conservative male dominant mindsets (We have capital punishment and gay marriage is not discussed here.) Vietnamese never make a big deal out of religions. If you shout it from the rooftop that you are an atheist, nobody will care and some might even say, "Good for you mate". However, if you were born a Catholic (I am!), you would have a hard time relinquishing it to your family and relatives. But really, there's a significant absence of the fundamentalist element that other countries have.

Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Taiwan are quite similar in these trends in terms of religion: we are not that zealously religious. Vietnam is different in that it has a stronger influence by Communism, which is characterized by a dislike for religion. People in Japan are not exactly devout either. And surprise surprise Nepal is drafting a law that will make same sex marriage legal (I guess it speaks volumes about the ambit of religion there!). The Communist Party of China tries to keep religion in check so they can make room for their Communist ranting and brainwashing. However, it is a VERY different situation in countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. They have a lot of Muslims living there and oh boy, you'd better not touch them! Homosexuality, for example, is punishable up to two years in prison in Singapore. Indonesia has huge Muslim mosques and there have been reports of a lot of violence and bombings there. I shudder in fear to see buses riding around with the phrase, "There's probably no God" on them in these countries.

Feel free to ask me questions if you have any.

Very interesting read, thanks for the information.

Sorry, no offense, but communism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's (Communist Manifesto) has a completely different ideology as opposed to one practiced by leaders of nations you mentioned. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even call it communism. I would call it dictatorship. It was created to fight bourgeoisie, but was later mistreated.

The way communism is presented to the rest of the western world is to scare the population and to prevent it from ever wishing it, so that Corporocracy would never end up sharing its gold. This was easily achieved through nations that abused it and misrepresented it.

I was lucky to grow up in former Yugoslavia where communism lived almost to its full potential for a brief period of 50 years. However, due to religion, everything fell apart.

I feel sorry, that many governments adopted communism as its doctrine, and abused it for their own advantage staining its name. I know that you probably saw a lot of negative aspects of it, but again, it was never meant to become dictatorship.

When I traveled through Yugoslavia in 1984, I had the impression that the society contrasted very sharply with neighbouring communist countries (especially Hungary and Bulgaria). Yugoslavia appeared to be better developed, its people less impoverished, and the attitude of the border police more relaxed (though probably still corrupt -- bribes were necessary).

Blondin, you are right. It is fair to say Tito was a dictator in a way, but nothing like Stalin or Mao. I am not a communist but there is a better side to it than it was represented. It was written to eliminate the class struggles at the time. It does carry some bizarre responsibilities. Its downside was achievement through revolution where the winning side would become the corruptive one. Tito was in no way perfect, but as I said Yugoslavia is the one that came closest to achieving this philosophy. To make it short, I wanted to show two sides of what is generally called the same thing.