Bengali Muslims in the context of "Sunnis"

Arab Muslims (Arabic: ﺍﻟْمُسْلِمون ﺍﻟْﻌَﺮَﺏ, romanized: al-Muslimūn al-ʿArab) are the Arabs who adhere to Islam. They are the largest subdivision of the Arab people and the largest ethnic group among Muslims globally, followed by Bengalis and Punjabis. Likewise, they comprise the majority of the population of the Arab world. Currently, around 93% of Arabs are Muslims, while the rest are mainly Arab Christians, as well as Druze and Baháʼís.

Although Arabs account for the largest ethnicity among the world's adherents of Islam, they are a minority in the Muslim world in terms of sheer numbers. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was an ethnic Arab belonging to the Banu Hashim of the Quraysh, and most of the early Muslims were also Arabs.

The Javanese (Javanese: ꦮꦺꦴꦁꦗꦮ, romanized: Wong Jåwå (in the ngoko register), ꦠꦶꦪꦁꦗꦮꦶ, Tiyang Jawi (in the krama register); Indonesian: Orang Jawa) are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the central and eastern part of Java island, which covers most of the administrative areas of the provinces of Central Java, East Java, and Special Region of Yogyakarta. With more than 100 million people, Javanese people are the largest ethnic group in both Indonesia and in Southeast Asia as a whole. Their native language is Javanese, it is the largest of the Austronesian languages in number of native speakers and also the largest regional language in Southeast Asia. As the largest ethnic group in the region, the Javanese have historically dominated the social, political, and cultural landscape of both Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

There are significant numbers of Javanese diaspora outside of central and eastern Java regions, including the other provinces of Indonesia, as well as other countries such as Suriname, Singapore, Malaysia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Yemen and the Netherlands. The Javanese ethnic group has many sub-groups (based on native Javanese community on the island of Java) that can be distinguished based on their characteristics, customs, traditions, dialects, or even their respective ways of life. These include Banyumasan, Cirebonese, Mataram, Osing, and Tenggerese. The majority of the Javanese people identify themselves as Sunni Muslims, with a small minority identifying as Christians and Hindus. With a large global population, the Javanese are considered significant as they are the largest Muslim ethnic group in the Far East and the fifth largest in the world after the Arabs, Bengalis, Punjabis, and Turks.

Punjabi Muslims (Punjabi: پن٘جابی مُسلمان) are Punjabis who are adherents of Islam. With a population of more than 112 million, they are the third-largest predominantly Islam-adhering Muslim ethnicity in the world, after Arabs and Bengalis.

The majority of Punjabi Muslims are adherents of Sunni Islam, while a minority adhere to Shia Islam. Most of them are primarily geographically native to the Pakistani province of Punjab, but a large group of them have ancestry across the Punjab region as a whole. Punjabi Muslims speak or identify with the Punjabi language (under a Perso-Arabic script known as Shahmukhi) as their mother tongue.

The Bangladesh genocide was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Army and the Razakars militia. It began on 25 March 1971, as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence from the Pakistani state. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.

West Pakistanis in particular were shown by the news that the operation was carried out because of the 'rebellion by the East Pakistanis' and many activities at the time were hidden from them, including rape and ethnic cleansing of East Pakistanis by the Pakistani military. Although the majority of the victims were Bengali Muslims, Hindus were especially targeted. In their investigation of the genocide, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists concluded that Pakistan's campaign also involved the attempt to exterminate or forcibly remove a significant portion of the country's Hindu populace. The West Pakistani government, which had implemented discriminatory legislation in East Pakistan, asserted that Hindus were behind the Mukti Bahini (Bengali resistance fighters) revolt and that resolving the local "Hindu problem" would end the conflict—Khan's government and the Pakistani elite thus regarded the crackdown as a strategic policy. Genocidal rhetoric accompanied the campaign: Pakistani men believed that the sacrifice of Hindus was needed to fix the national malaise. In the countryside, Pakistan Army moved through villages and specifically asked for places where Hindus lived before burning them down. Hindus were identified by checking circumcision or by demanding the recitation of Muslim prayers. This also resulted in the migration of around eight million East Pakistani refugees into India, 80–90% of whom were Hindus.

British Bangladeshis (Bengali: বিলাতী বাংলাদেশী, romanized: Bilatī Bangladeshī) are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom whose ancestral roots are from Bangladesh. Bengali Muslims have prominently been migrating to the UK since World War II. Migration reached its peak during the 1970s, with most originating from the Sylhet Division. The largest concentration live in east London boroughs, such as Tower Hamlets. This large diaspora in London leads people in Sylhet to refer to British Bangladeshis as Londonis (Bengali: লন্ডনী).

Bengali nationalism is a form of ethnic nationalism that focuses on Bengalis as a single ethnicity by rejecting imposition of other languages and cultures while promoting its own in Bengal. Bengalis speak the Bengali language and mostly live across Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam (Barak Valley). Bengali nationalism is one of the four fundamental principles according to the Constitution of Bangladesh and was the main driving force behind the creation of the independent nation state of Bangladesh through the 1971 liberation war. Bengali Muslims make up the majority (90%) of Bangladesh's citizens (Bangladeshis), and are the largest minority in the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal, whereas Bengali Hindus make up the majority of India's citizens (Indians) in Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, and are the largest minority in the Indian states of Assam and Jharkhand and the independent state of Bangladesh (8%).