Talk:Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Mismatch of info between articles

This article says "80% of Cocos Islanders are Sunni Muslim", but Culture of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands says "Around 65% of the Islands' Cocos Malay residents are practising Muslims". Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:41, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, it seems everyone is pretty casual with the facts here. This article say "80% of Cocos Islanders are Sunni Muslim" but cites a 2010 CIA World Fact File entry which says "Muslim (predominantly Sunni) 75%" so the percentage is wrong and we've gone from "predominantly Sunni" to the presumption of entirely Sunni. The culture article says "Around 65% of the Islands' Cocos Malay residents are practising Muslims" which cites a 2001 document which has many data points but I presume the relevant one is the "mid-2000" figure of 66.7% Muslim (no breakdown into Sunni etc) and says nothing about whether they are Malay or non-Malay and nothing about whether they are actively practising or not and have decided to go for a rounded figure for no obvious reason. Meanwhile for a more recent and arguable more authoritative data point the 2016 Census says 75% Islam (no breakdown by Sunni, Malay-ness, or practicing). I'd suggest reporting the 2016 census in both articles, and maybe add a comment about being predominantly Sunni citing the CIA. I don't think we can or should say anything about "Malay residents" in talking about the current population. With the arrival of the Malays occurring in the 1800s, it's not entirely appropriate to describe them as "Malay residents" any more, they are Australian citizens as much as the rest of us, and the 2016 census for Cocos shows this with 82.5% born in Australia and 74.0% had both parents born in Australia and a further 9.6% with one parent born in Australia. If we want to say something about their Malay-ness, I think the only reliable thing we can say is that 2016 census tells us that 69.6% of Cocos population speak Malay at home (and while one suspects these are probably the same folk as the 75% reporting as Islamic, the census does not "prove" that). So I'd been inclined to report the two data points (language, religion) separately and make no statement about their inter-relationship (let the reader decide what to make of it all). Kerry (talk) 09:43, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for digging up the detail on that, Kerry. I was just noting in passing because I'm trying to work through my (ever-extending) list of things to do/clean up after being away for a few weeks, but I'll make a note and try to come back to this one sometime. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:21, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I adjusted the percentages citing the 2016 census in both articles. Kerry (talk) 10:22, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Flag

Per the CIA World Factbook entry for Cocos Islands, "the flag of Australia is used".["Australia - Oceania :: Cocos (Keeling) Islands — The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2020-03-10.] The flag currently displayed in the infobox apparently is unofficial. Unless someone can convince me that displaying an unofficial flag is appropriate in this article, I will (evenually) replace it with the flag of Australia. - Donald Albury 13:07, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

It's official enough that it has its own emoji this ABC news caption also indicates that it is the official flag. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:24, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

@Donald Albury: it's also used on the official shire of COCOS website, see upper right corner. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:09, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Part of Oceania or Asia?

Well, one edit of the Commons user @Well-Informed Optimist: on c:Template:CRT list2: [1], its description seems to challange the continent division in this area: "Cocos (Keeling) Islands in Asia, not Oceania". I wonder who said true here? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:45, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

It's an arbitrary convention, there's no "true" answer. CMD (talk) 09:41, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

It's geographically in Southeast Asia. SHB2000 (talk) 07:19, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

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