(Text
by Nath Mèn)

Egil Lothe, Secretary General of Buddhist Confederation has sent the Meeting Report of Buddhism to Buddhist organizations in Norway. The report wrote in Norwegian – (Download). We translate it to English and Khmer (Cambodian)

Calculating Buddhists in Norway

1. Buddhists with immigrant backgrounds

The National Statistics Norway (SSB) report takes note about immigrants and Norwegian-born with immigrant parents, which is updated March 14, 2019. Two countries (Sri-Lanka and Vietnam) are counted Buddhists in Norway basing on the percentage of population in home country where the CIA’s World Factbook is used, but it is not really enough. Buddhist rates in Norway are counted both high and low percentage in home countries. Sometimes there are different principles they are not really sued for Sri-Lanka and Vietnam. Here SSB has find out another data statistics of Buddhist numbers for immigrant groups. The numbers show you for many groups from 6 countries/lands with Buddhist population that has counted on based criteria.

  • Bhutan – Total has 413 people, and the number of Buddhists are 306 people.
  • Hong Kong – Total has 1079 people, and the number of Buddhists are 301 people.
  • Japan – Total has 1132 people, and the number of Buddhists are 790 people.
  • Cambodia /Khmer – Total has 606 people, and the number of Buddhists are 587 people.
  • China – Total has 11345 people, and the number of Buddhists are 2065 people.
  • Laos – Total has 147 people and the number of Buddhists are 95 people.
  • Malaysia – has 903 people, and the number of Buddhists are 179 people.
  • Mongolia – Total has 170 people, and the number of Buddhists are 91 people.
  • Myanmar – Total has 4110 people, and the number of Buddhists are 3613 people.
  • Nepal – Total has 2376 people, and the number of Buddhists are 214 people.
  • Singapore – Total has 474 people, and the number of Buddhists are 161 people.
  • Sri Lanka – Total has 15596 persons, and the number of Buddhists are 586 persons.
  • South Korea – Total has 1235 people, and the number of Buddhists are 191 people.
  • Taiwan – Total has 350 people, and the number of Buddhists are 124 people.
  • Thailand – Total has 21408 people, and the number of Buddhists are 20252 people.
  • Vietnam – Total has 23313 people, and the number of Buddhists are 10258 people.

Buddhists in Norway – the number of Buddhists with immigrant backgrounds in 2019 can be calculated to 39,831 people.

2. Ethnic Norwegians /Western backgrounds

We do not know how many ethnic Norwegians / people of Western origin residing in Norway who counted themselves as Buddhists. However, members of the religious communities and the Buddhist Confederation “ethnic Norwegians” are still small groups.

The Buddhist Confederation has 8 Organizations’ members that they are not tied to a group with immigrant background from the countries with Buddhist population. The members of those Organizations are staying in Norway as ethnic Norwegians or other Western backgrounds. Some members (specially, Thai Buddhist Association) have soms groups under the Association both immigrant backgrounds and ethnic Norwegian backgrounds. In addition, 564 members have directly registered with the Confederation. The 8 Organizations’ members (as well as members with “transfer” direct Organization) do register per June 2019 up to 2031 members (directly registered to the Confederation).

In addition, 5 Buddhist communities in Norway come from ethnic Norwegian backgrounds: The Norwegian Soto Zen Buddhist Order (224 members), Diamond Road Buddhism (104 members), Zen Fredrikstad (45 members), the Nordic Kadampa Meditation Center (29 members), and Nichiren Shoshu Norway (19 members). In total they have 421 members.

3. Total numbers of Buddhists in Norway

The backgrounds are counted as ethnic Norwegians /Western which are registered as members of a Buddhist communities /societies, total is raising up 2,452 members. We know the experiences that there are also some people who are not registered in yet while they themselves, are Buddhists. Recently we have no data statistics that can find out real numbers for the groups. So we stand back to the numbers of 2,452 members.

As above, the numbers are estimated 39,831 Buddhists in Norway. We added 2,452 Buddhists with ethnic Norwegians /Western we have got 42,265 Buddhists (in Norway). As mention above we can therefore estimate the total Buddhist numbers, are around 42000 people.

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