According to

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

's 2007 census, Libya has more than 15,010 workers from

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

and other Buddhist countries (about 12,000

Koreans Koreans are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Korean Peninsula. The majority of Koreans live in the two Korean sovereign states of North and South Korea, which are collectively referred to as Korea. As of 2021, an estimated 7.3 m ...

and more than 2,000 citizens from China) which made up about 0.3% of total population of Libya. As a result, Libya has one of highest proportions of Buddhists in

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

despite there not being any Buddhist

pagoda A pagoda is a tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist, but some ...

s or temples.

Theravada ''Theravāda'' (; 'School of the Elders'; ) is Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school's adherents, termed ''Theravādins'' (anglicized from Pali ''theravādī''), have preserved their version of the Buddha's teaching or ''Dharma (Buddhi ...

Buddhists make up two thirds and are primarily Sinhalese while the remaining third follow

East Asian Buddhism East Asian Buddhism or East Asian Mahayana is a collective term for the schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism which developed across East Asia and which rely on the Chinese Buddhist canon. These include the various forms of Chinese, Japanese, Kore ...

and are Korean or Chinese nationals.

History

Hegesias of Cyrene was a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school around 290 BC. It has been thought by some that Hegesias was influenced by

Greco-Buddhism Greco-Buddhism or Graeco-Buddhism was a cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism developed between the 4th century BC and the 5th century AD in Gandhara, which was in present-day Pakistan and parts of north-east Afghanis ...

References

* Country Profile of Libya (Religious Intelligence

* Religious Freedom Profile of Libya * The US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2006 - Libya Buddhism by country, Libya Religion in Libya

{{Libya-stub

History

See also

References