Islam in Mauritius

Islam is the third largest religion in Mauritius. Muslims constitute over 18.24 per cent of Mauritius population. Many Mauritian Muslims are of Indian descent, tracing their origins to the large-scale migration of indentured laborers from India during the British colonial period. This migration began in 1834 and continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Mauritius became independent in 1968 and no official religion is defined in the constitution. Hindus make up about half of the population, Christians about a third and Muslims most of the rest. Several religious groups including Muslim ones are recognized by parliamentary decree and receive state subsidies according to their percentage of the population.

Some scholars believe that Muslims arrived in Mauritius with the Dutch as slaves from Arabia, but this view is contested as the Arabians who were with the Dutch were mostly traders. Some of the later Black slaves from Subsaharan East Africa may have been Muslims. Half of all the Black and Malagasy slaves sold to the French colonists were captured by Muslim slavers based in Zanzibar as part of the broader Indian Ocean Arab slave trade based in Oman.

Under British rule, South Asian Muslims arrived in Mauritius as from 1834. Indentured labourers arrived on a large scale from India, mostly from Bihar boarding ships from Kolkata and Mumbai.

There were a total of 450,000 Indian immigrants from 1835 to 1907, and after 1909, the immigration of indentured labourers stopped. They were brought from India for a period of five years, after which they had the opportunity to go back. By 1922, only 160,000 had returned to India, with the others settling down in Mauritius.

A few wealthy Muslim families of traders from Gujarat also settled on the island along with the majority poor working classes. The population of Muslims is rumoured to have been 33% (no reference) of the total population during 1835, 64% during 1861 (no reference), but allegedly reduced to less than 25% by 1909. Traditionally Sunnis remained a majority, while other groups like Sunni Shafia, Shia and Bohra represent around 20 per cent of the total Muslims in the country.

Cocknies, Kodjas, Bohras and Aga-khanities are believed to have arrived in Mauritius during 1910 from East Africa. Tawheed ideology, which was commonly followed in Mauritius was replaced by Islamic Circle Religious Group which culled out religious practices from India. The trend was changed after the evolution of oil-rich Arab countries in the 1970s.

The largest group of Muslims are the Sunnis, comprising around 90 per cent of the population. Sunnis are divided among various factions such as the Salafis. While the majority adheres to the Hanafi school of thoughts, there are other factions that follow the Shafe'i school of thought. There are also Muslims who follow Shi'ism. Meimons are a small aristocratic group, who control the Jummah Mosque in Port Louis. Shiaties form a small community of around 3 per cent of the total population. One of the subgroups are called Cocknies, who are believed to have arrived as boat builders from Cochin in India. Creole Lascars are a new subgroup, who have intermarried with Cocknies or other communities.