(Chu Yao-lung) in 1945 while visiting the United States. By May 1955 there were eighteen Baháʼís in six localities across Taiwan. The first Local Spiritual Assembly in Taiwan was established in Tainan in 1956. With a growing number of Local Spiritual Assemblies (Taipei, Tainan, Hualien and Pingtung), the Taiwanese National Spiritual Assembly was established in 1967. In the 2005 official statistics on religion issued by the Department of Civil Affairs, the Baháʼís had 16,000 members and 13 Local Spiritual Assemblies. Christianity Christianity in Taiwan constituted 3.9% of the population according to the census of 2005. Christians on the island included approximately 600,000 Protestants, 300,000 Catholics and a small number of Members from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Despite its minority status, many of the early Kuomintang political leaders of the Republic of China were Christians. Several Republic of China presidents have been Christians, including Sun Yat-sen who was a Congregationalist, Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo who were Methodists, Lee Teng-hui is a member of the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian Church has strong ties with the Democratic Progressive Party since the 1980s. Christianity in Taiwan has been on the decline since the 1970s, after a strong growth from 1950 to the 1960s. Islam Though Islam originated in the Arabian Peninsula, it had spread eastward to China as early as the 7th century CE. Muslim merchants married local Chinese women, creating a new Chinese ethnic group called the Hui people. Islam first reached Taiwan in the 17th century when Muslim families from the southern China's coastal province of Fujian accompanied Koxinga on his invasion to oust the Dutch from Taiwan. Islam did not spread and their descendants became assimilated into the local Taiwanese society adopting the local customs and religions. During the Chinese Civil War, some 20,000 Muslims, mostly soldiers and civil servants, fled mainland China with the Kuomintang to Taiwan. Since the 1980s, thousands of Muslims from Myanmar and Thailand, who are descendants of nationalist soldiers who fled Yunnan as a result of the communist takeover, have migrated to Taiwan in search of a better life. In more recent years, there has been a rise in Indonesian workers to Taiwan. According to the census of 2005, there were 58,000 Muslims in Taiwan in that year. In 2021 there were 280,000 Muslims living in Taiwan with most being foreign nationals. Taiwan is highly ranked as a Muslim friendly tourism