1 in 4 People Worldwide is Muslim
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
The following article is
taken from the Pew Forum on Religious & Public Life on Thursday, 08th
October 2009. The global Muslim
population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people in the
world practice Islam. The Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life report provides a precise number for a population
whose size has long been subject to guesswork, with estimates ranging anywhere
from 1 billion to 1.8 billion. You can click
here for more information on the study: Mapping
the Global Muslim Population.
The project has some surprises when we consider the data. For example, Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon, China has more Muslims than Syria, Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined, and Ethiopia has nearly as many Muslims as Afghanistan. Pew officials call the report the most thorough on the size and distribution of adherents of the world’s second largest religion behind Christianity, which has an estimated 2.1 billion to 2.2 billion followers. The notion that most Muslims are Arabs, for example, is comprehensively debunked.
Since so few countries track sectarian affiliation, Shi’ah numbers are not as precise; the report estimates that Shi’ah represent between 10 % and 13 % of the Muslim population, in line with or slightly lower than other studies. As much as 80 % of the world’s Shi’ah population lives in four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India, and Iraq. The report provides further evidence that while the heart of Islam might beat in the Middle East, its greatest numbers lie in Asia: More than 60 % of the world’s Muslims live in Asia. About 20 % live in the Middle East and North Africa, 15 % live in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2.4 % are in Europe and 0.3 % are in the Americas. While the Middle East and North Africa have fewer Muslims overall than Asia, the region easily claims the most Muslim-majority countries.
The report identified
about 317 million Muslims - or one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population -
living in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. About three-quarters of Muslims living as
minorities are concentrated in five countries: India with 161 million, Ethiopia
with 28 million, China with 22 million, Russia with 16 million, and Tanzania with
13 million. In several of these
countries – from India to Nigeria and China to France – divisions featuring a
volatile mix of religion, class and politics have contributed to tension and
bloodshed among groups. The immense size
of Hindu-majority India is underscored by the fact that it boasts the
third-largest Muslim population of any nation - yet Muslims account for just 13
percent of India's population.
Among the report's other highlights include the fact that two-thirds of all Muslims live in 10 countries. Six are in Asia - Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran, and Turkey, three are in North Africa - Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco; and one is in sub-Saharan Africa, which is Nigeria.
Indonesia, which has a tradition of a more tolerant Islam, has the world’s largest Muslim population with 203 million, or 13 % of the world’s total. Religious extremists have been involved in several high-profile bombings there in recent years. In China, the highest concentrations of Muslims were in western provinces. The country experienced its worst outbreak of ethnic violence in decades when rioting broke out this summer between minority Muslim Uighurs and majority Han Chinese.
Europe is home to about 38 million Muslims, or about 5 % of its population. Germany appears to have more than 4 million Muslims - almost as many as North and South America combined. In France, where tensions have run high over an influx of Muslim immigrant labourers, the overall numbers were lower, but a larger percentage of the population is Muslim.
Of roughly 4.6 million
Muslims in the Americas, more than half live in the United States although they
only make up 0.8 % of the population there. About 700,000 people in Canada are Muslim, or
about 2 % of the total population.
Last 2 weeks ago, I got a sms from a friend who volunteers with Darul to attend a monthly discussion in Mandarin. This time round, i was told that Darul had employed a chinese muslim imam from Taiwan.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, he was young and knowledgeable. All Praise and Thanks be to Allah for letting us have him here in darul and in SG.
Too bad, the sister said that she had passed the information to almost about 50 but only about 20 odd came. Such a pity though.
Anyway, back to the point i wanted to say. He also talked about the global statistics of Muslims. But he said; even though there were almost more than a billion Muslims, but how many actually practised the religion as their way of life? The life that we lead now is so far fetched from the lives back then, from the time of our Prophet Muhammad s.a.w and after.
We, ummah of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w lack the lustre of the once glorified ummah 1400yrs ago.
Assalamu'Alaikum,
ReplyDeleteIn the time of the Prophet (s.a.w.), when the sahaba sat down to eat in a circle, the Propher (s.a.w.) said, "There will come a time, when the nations of the world will gather and they will take from my Ummah as you take food from the tray. My Ummah will be oppressed"
"Ya Rasulullah, is it because they are few?"
"My Ummah will be like the grains of sand by the ocean."
"Ya Rasululah, how can that be, if they are so many?"
"It is because they love dunya more than they love akhirah."
Wassalam,