Many Muslims

Pew have just released a report: Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Muslim Population. It's an interesting study from a pure numbers perspective. From its numbers nearly a quarter of the world are now Muslim. And, as you can see from the diagram, Indonesia is the most Muslim country from a scale perspective at 202 million, but that only represents 88% of the total population. Places like Iran and Iraq have 99% Muslim penetration, if that's a phrase! The UAE with all its non Muslim expats comes in at 76% Muslim.



The total numbers are crazy - there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages in the world today, about 23 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion. This is second only to Christianity which is estimated to be about 2 billion. The other interesting fact is that more than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of their global population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. Muslims are a minority in India but it has the third-largest Muslim population (161 million).

Ten to 13 percent of Muslims are estimated to be Shias and most Shias live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq. Sunnis account for 87 to 90 percent of the Muslim population.

It's all interesting stats in this day and age, and if anything, the executive summary is worth 30 seconds of your time, whatever your religion!


A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population
Pew maps the Muslim world