What are places where historically Islam has receded?

by Broceliande

Both endemically or due to foreign influence please

CptBuck

What do you mean by "receded"? And what do you mean by "endemically"? The latter is a term I'm more familiar with in the context of diseases.

Thoctar

As far as I know, there's no places where Islam has "endemically" receded, meaning, I assume without outside influence, but including outside influence there have been quite a few. Sicily and Spain were both territories where Muslims ruled for a great number of years and where significant portions of the population were Muslim, however, after the conquering of those territories by Christian rulers, most Muslims were expelled or converted, and both have minimal Muslim populations today.

The same is true in the other two regions I will talk about, though this happened much more recently and was due to the rise of nationalism. In the Balkans, Muslims were once much more widespread than they are now, due to Ottoman rule, however, after the rise of nationalism and the independence of many Balkan territories, as well as the Yugoslav wars, Muslims are now concentrated in Turkey, Albania, and Bosnia, with a small population in Bulgaria whereas formerly Muslims lived in Greece, Serbia, and Macedonia, among others, in large numbers. Many migrated to Turkey, such as during the famous population transfers between Greece and Turkey.

The same happened in India, where huge population transfers between Pakistan (At that point including Bangladesh) and India, although a substantial number of Muslims live in India to this day, they are not nearly as prevalent a religious group than they were in the past, due to the population transfers. If you have any other questions feel free to ask!