Talk:Demographics of Pakistan

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Contents 1 Deobandi & Barelvi: most Pakistanis would say they are neither 2 Pakistani statistics don't include the areas controlled by India 3 Historical demographics 4 poorly written

[edit] Deobandi & Barelvi: most Pakistanis would say they are neither

Most Pakistani Sunnis do not identify themselves as either Deobandi or Barelvi. Simple reality check: ask a few Pakistanis if they are Deobandi or Barelvi. Quite likely, you'll get a blank stare in response. Most people don't even know what these terms mean. The people who do know tend to be either highly educated or highly religious, and even they don't necessarily identify with one or the other. Some are just confused as which sect they might belong to. Fro example, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in April, "Sometimes I get confused about my own identity as a Muslim and I have to think really hard on which sect I belong to.". I just ran a Google search for a few religious terms on Pakistan top-level domain, (.pk) and here are the results:

• Muslim: 245000 matches.
• Deobandi 345 matches.
• Barelvi 378 matches.

Obviously Deobandi and Barelvi are not very widely-used terms, and it is easy to imagine that many Muslims, far from identifying as Deobandi or Barelvi, are neither. EastBayer 22:28, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The statistics of people adhering to a particular school is evident by the number of Madrasahs and Masjids. It is also true that among Sunnis, that they pray in any Sunni Masjid. Both facts are true. So both should be mentioned.

Siddiqui 13:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The article says that percentage of non-shia muslims(who will identify themselves ultimately as sunnis) is 77%. This is absolutely bull shit. This CIA figure is meaningless since in pakistan population survey they do not ask about your affiliation with sunni or shia background. So both the figures for sunnis and shias must be removed provided a referrence from pakistan official population survey is provided. Sunnis in pakistan are believed to exceed 90% of population if this question about your affiliation with sunni or shia background is included in the next official population survey, which has not been done until today. You cannot estimate the numbers of shias by the size of their processions on 10th of muharram since most of people in those crowds are ordianry sunnis who would just go in shia processions as the spektators to watch the circus show held by shias on the 10th of muharram.

[edit] Pakistani statistics don't include the areas controlled by India

I removed the statement that "Although Pakistani statistics claim a small number of Buddhists on its territory, these Buddhists actually live in Ladakh ^[1] in Indian Administered Kashmir, which Pakistan claims." Pakistani statistics don't include Indian-controlled areas, because Pakistan claims them as potentially parts of Pakistan, subject to a referendum by their people. The Pakistani government doesn't claim that they are currently part of Pakistan. EastBayer 22:57, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical demographics

What of demographics prior to 1971 when Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan and the Bengali population was massive. — Nobleeagle ^[TALK] [C] 02:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] poorly written

This is suppossed to talk about the ethnic groups of Pakistan not just languages.Instead it talks about Arabic,Persian.What has that got to do with Pakistani people? Just because they recite the Quran in Arabic or once spoke persian?

Not much mention of the cultures of the ethnic group.And as for Turkish being the language of the Mughals is very flawed.Mughals might have similar origins to the Turkic people's,with similar languages but they didn't speak Turkish.

Also note that Turkish and urdu are from different language families so it is not the parent language of Urdu.Just really lent words to it that's all.

And South Asia is not India.India is a country in South Asia.

Until someone can help make major corrections, Please do not remove the templates as I placed them there for a reason and a good reason too.--Vmrgrsergr 18:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Their was no good reason for putting the tags on Persian, and Arabic. Urdu and Hindi have had significant influence from Persian. The national anthem is in Persian. Persian was once the language of the subcontinent, and the major urdu poets like Iqbal, and Ghalib wrote in Persian. IP198 00:43, 31 May 2007 (UTC)