Created by baba66, -{R|http://de.wikipedia.org}-, 2006-04-11 License: cc-by-sa/2.0/de and GFDL

The vector data of the countries is from the world map of the CIA World Factbook which is in the public domain.

It contains some of the improvements over my PNG-version of the map made by user dbachmann of the english Wikipedia: a blue ocean, fading the countries to white and cropping the image. I also made the scale smoother and overlapping in the middle. It was technically not possible, to make it completely smooth, though, without loosing the direct connection to the stylesheets used for the countries' backgrounds.

*** COLORS ***

Colors may be changed in the stylesheets below, but: please don't change them just because you think it looks better on *your* screen, even if it's calibrated: most other users' screens are not.

Ich chose realtively dark base colors: This gives more space for differrent shades. You'll loose that, if you change the green e.g. to #0f0.

Green is the color of Islam, so there's nothing to talk about that. Red fo the Shiites is less obvious but also quasi mandatory because of the cult of martyrdom and blood within the Shia and especially in Iran.

Blue: Well, it's the third color in the RGB colorspace. Not symbolic but practical: the Ibadis are a very small fraction of Islam. I really hesitated to give them a distinct color, because Oman is a relatively large country by area. By giving the ocean a darker blue, thus reducing the contrast to oman, I think I may have managed to show the distinctness of the Ibadis while not overemphasising their historical and demographical importance in the heart of the islamic world.

*** HOW TO EDIT THIS FILE ***

PLEASE DON'T EDIT THIS FILE WITH A GRAPHICS PROGRAM UNTIL YOU MADE SHURE IT DOESN'T DO HARM TO THE STRUCTURE OF IT! Take a text-editor instead. (Thanks ;-))

Normally only the precentage values will have to be changed in this map. This is done with the "fill-opacity" attribute in the "Percentages" section below. This value ranges from 0 to 1, so if there is a 50% sunni population, it's set to 0.5, 10% to 0.1 etc. Be aware that values below 0.2 are not visible on many screens or in print. I provided most of the sub-10% data while creating this file but I don't think it's worth maintaining it *in* the map. Better think of providing textual data.

If you add additional shii-maps, please insert them *after* the sunni ones (look at iran below) so that the colors will stay consistent.

I gave a link to the source of each value and sometimes comments, when I thought it neccessary to modify it. Pleas update the links (and the dates in the comments behind them) if you think another source is more sound.

Changing path data is more complicated. If a border changes, I'd suggest to take an up-to date version of the CIA map of the world. You should export the backgrounds of the affected countries from there and a neighbouring country as a reference. Do the same with this map. Look at the difference and adjust it in your graphic program. Then copy the resulting path data as text to this file. Well, or ask