Only 2pc are Muslims

Muslims make up just over two percent of Myanmar's population, government census figures showed yesterday, undercutting claims by Buddhist hardliners that Islam poses a threat to the dominance of their faith.

Full details from the 2014 count, the first of its kind in decades, was withheld for almost a year to avoid stirring tensions in the Buddhist-majority nation ahead of elections that propelled Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party to power.

Islamophobia has rippled across Myanmar in recent years, with Buddhist nationalists sending alarmist messages about the growth of the Muslim population.

But the new data affirms that Buddhists make up 90 percent of the population of 51.48 million.

They are followed in number by Christians (6.3 percent) and Muslims (2.3 percent or over 1.1 million people).

However, the survey does not include the one-million strong stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, who were banned from self-identifying during the census taking.

Added together, their number doubles the country's share of Muslims to around four percent -- an estimate that has been in circulation since the last census in 1983.

"Some were worried that there could be a significant difference in the numbers of each religion," Thein Swe, Minister of Labour, Immigration and Population told reporters in the capital Naypyidaw as he released the data.

"But there is not much difference when compared with the census data in 1983."

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said the figures should extinguish incendiary rhetoric.