Islam in Australia is a minority religious affiliation. According to the 2021 Census in Australia, the combined number of people who self-identified as Muslims in Australia, from all forms of Islam, constituted 813,392 people, or 3.2% of the total Australian population. That total Muslim population makes Islam, in all its denominations and sects, the second largest religious grouping in Australia, after all denominations of Christianity (43.9%, also including non-practicing cultural Christians). Demographers attribute Muslim community growth trends during the most recent census period to relatively high birth rates, and recent immigration patterns. Adherents of Islam represent the majority of the population in Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an external territory of Australia. The vast majority of Muslims in Australia are Sunni, with significant minorities belonging to Shia and Ahmadiyya branches. The followers of each of these are further split along different Madhhab (schools of thought within Islamic jurisprudence for the interpretation and practice of Islamic law) and Sub-Sect. There are also practitioners of other smaller denominations of Islam such as Ibadi Muslim Australians of Omani descent, and approximately 20,000 Druze Australians whose religion emerged as an offshoot of Islam which arrived in Australia with the immigration of Druze mainly from Lebanon and Syria. There are also Sufi (Islamic mysticism) minorities among Muslim practitioners in Australia. While the overall Australian Muslim community is defined largely by a common religious identity with "Islam", Australia's Muslims aren't a monolithic community. The Australian Muslim community is fragmented into not only the traditional sectarian divisions of what each sect defines as Islam, but it is also extremely diverse racially, ethnically, culturally and linguistically. Different Muslim groups within the Australian Muslim community thus also espouse parallel non-religious ethnic identities with related non-Muslim counterparts, either within Australia or abroad. History Prior to 1860 Islam has been in Australia since the 1700s when Macassan traders were long-term visitors to Arnhem land (now Northern Territory). A dance among the Warramiri people refers to a dreamtime creational being is given the name, Walitha Walitha, which is an adaptation of the Arabic phrase Allah ta’ala (God, the exalted). The ‘Dreaming’ creation figure, Walitha’ walitha, is also known as Allah. In the Warramiri tradition, Walitha' walitha descends from heaven to re-establish order from infighting and violence between different groups in Arnhem land. Indigenous Australians share this ceremony, known as the Wurramu, with the people of Macassar Indonesia, but the Aboriginal version is a mortuary