Global Muslim Population

Quick. How many Muslims are in the world today? According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's Report, Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population released in October there are 1.57 billion--23% of the world's population of 6.8 billion. About 80% of Muslims live in countries where Islam is the majority religion. Indonesia has the largest number of Muslims with over 202 million; Pakistan has 174 million; India: 160 million; and Bangladesh: 145 million. It is interesting to me that without the partition of India into Pakistan and Bangladesh, India would be by far the largest Muslim populated country with nearly 500 million Muslims, or nearly one-third of the world's Muslims.

I took a look at the State Department's list of countries where it deemed noteworthy violations of religious freedom to have occurred--there are 29 on the list, and 17 of them are Muslim-majority countries, with most of them nearly entirely Muslim. There is, of course, much to consider in these numbers. Of the remaining 12 on the list, the next largest grouping consists of currently communist/socialist countries (China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Laos, Vietnam) and formerly communist Russia.

62% of Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region, while only 20% live in the Middle East-North Africa region. In the entire of the Americas, there are only 4.6 million Muslims, or about .3% of the world's Muslim population. 87-90% are Sunni while the other 10-13% are Shia, with most of the Shias living in Iran, Pakistan, India, and Iraq.

With the large birth rate in Muslim families and the migration of Muslims to other parts of the world, the demographics of populations throughout the world are changing rapidly. The Pew Forum intends to release a study in 2010 "that will estimate growth rates among Muslim populations worldwide and project Muslim populations into the future." Can we deduce that in light of the significant restrictions placed by Muslims on religious freedom in Muslim-dominated countries, there will be a negative impact on religious freedom from an increasing Muslim population in other countries? These trends will be important to follow.