Enda80

Ted Nomura, in his comic book series Dictators of the Twentieth Century, stated that around 1450, the largest religion in the world was Sunni Islam. Is that right?

(I suppose he at least meant the largest religion whose followers adhered to it the exclusion of any other religion, since as we know, people in Japan and China adhere to Buddhist thought without calling themselves Buddhist.)

Toto

It sounds about right. In 1450, large parts of Europe were under Muslim rule (the Ottoman Empire), and all of the Middle East, North Africa, and most of Central Asia. There were still Muslims in Spain.

1450 was before the population explosion in China and India, and before Europeans developed the technology to colonize the Americas and replace their low density hunting and gathering populations with higher density agricultural communities.

Enda80

http://www.antarctic-press.com/html/.../hitler_01.htm

is a site with information on the book where Nomura made that statement, that Sunni Islam was once the largest religion in the world around 1450. (Actually, I think it was in issue#3.)