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General Information: Religion
Unlike most of Muslim-majority Indonesia, about 93.18% of Bali's
population adheres to Balinese Hinduism, formed as a combination of
existing local beliefs and Hindu influences from mainland Southeast
Asia and South Asia. Minority religions include Islam (4.79%),
Christianity (1.38%), and Buddhism (0.64%). These figures do not
include immigrants from other parts of Indonesia.
Bali consists of about three million people, nearly all of whom
practice the Balinese Hindu religion, a heterogeneous amalgam in
which gods and demigods are worshipped together with Buddhist
heroes, with the spirits of ancestors and with indigenous deities
associated with agriculture and with places considered sacred.
Religion as it is practiced in Bali is a composite belief system
that embraces not only theology, philosophy, and mythology, but
ancestor worship, animism and magic. It is supposed to pervade every
aspect of traditional life.
Bali Hinduism, which has roots in Indian Hinduism and in Buddhism,
adopted the animistic traditions of the indigenous people, which
inhabited the island around the first millennium BCE. This influence
strengthened the belief that the gods and goddesses are present in
all things. Every element of nature, therefore, possesses its own
power, which reflects the power of the gods. A rock, tree, dagger,
or woven cloth is a potential home for spirits whose energy can be
directed for good or evil. Balinese Hinduism is deeply interwoven
with art and ritual, and is less closely preoccupied with scripture,
law, and belief than Islam in Indonesia. Ritualizing states of
self-control are a notable feature of religious expression among the
people, who for this reason have become famous for their graceful
and decorous behavior
Source :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali
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