Isn’t Malaysia majority Islam? There are no restrictions on Catholics and Christians in general?
Malaysia is a Muslim majority country but only a small majority of about 60%. All ethnic Malays, who form 50% of the population are by definition Muslims (if a Malay convert out of Islam, then technically he/she have no race). The rest of the Muslims are largely non-Malay natives, Muslim immigrants from Indonesia & Philipines and some Indians. The Chinese (25% of the population) are predominantly Buddist and Chinese folk religion syncretised with Buddism and Taoism. Christians are 9% of the population (and likely the fastest growing of the main religions, up from 7% a decade ago), two thirds of which are non-Malay natives. One-third of the Christians are Catholics, down from half a generaton ago.
However, due to the political insecurity of the indigeneous race in Malaya at the time of independence in 1957, the consitution provides for Islam as the state religion and the nine sultans as the head of religion in their respective states (but with consitutional guarantees of religious freedom for all and Syaria law applying only for marriage & inheritance for Muslims only - as such, debate is ranging today whether Malaysia is a secular state or an Islamic state).
Due to the ethnic and religious nature of politics in Malaysia (the ruling coalition is built around three ethnic-based parties), we never got to building a single nation, irrespective of race or religion. You may be aware that the government in Malaysia has last month seized Malay-language Bibles used by non-Malay Christian natives and containing the word Allah, on the grounds that Malay Muslims could get confused and convert out of Islam over the Christian use of the Muslim word for God (what does that say about the strength of the Muslim faith and their faith education?).
Also, last year a court ruled that the Catholic newspaper is not allowed to use the word Allah in its publications, leading to a lot of chest-beating by Muslim nationalist NGOs and threats against any challange to the court ruling. Needless to say, it led to a lof of ridicule of Malaysian Muslims by Muslims outside of the country.
As for Singapore…i am not sure what the majority religion is there-buddhism perhaps?
Singapore, on the other hand, is a 75% Chinese majority nation, most of whom follow a syncretised form of Buddism, Taoism and ancestor worship folk religion (most Chinese anywhere who call themselves Buddist are not Buddist in the same sense as the Thais or Tibetans - they really follow a syncretised religion). There is also a sizeable contingent of Buddist Chinese in the same sense as the Thais, or Tibetan. (It must be understood that the Chinese culture is not religion-based. This is not to say that the Chinese culture is not religious - it requires only acceptance of Confucianist tenets, irresepctive of regilion). some 20% are Christian, with Catholicism a decreasing proportion - about one third of all Christians currently from more than half a generation ago.
(MarThomite).