Islam is one of the great world religions, and its followers are spread across every inhabited continent. According to the Pew Research Center, there were about 1.6 billion Muslims in 2010; the total has grown since, and today it stands at roughly 1.9 to 2 billion, close to a quarter of all humanity. That makes Islam the world's second-largest religion, after Christianity. This article looks at where those Muslims actually live, which countries have the largest communities, and how the global map of Islam is shaped.
A religion centred on Asia, not Arabia
One of the most common misconceptions is that most Muslims are Arabs living in the Middle East. In reality, the great majority live much further east. Pew estimates that around 60% of the world's Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region, while only about 20% live in the Middle East and North Africa. A further share, roughly 15%, lives in sub-Saharan Africa, with smaller but significant communities in Europe and the Americas. The Arab world, in other words, is home to a minority of the world's Muslims.
The largest Muslim populations
The countries with the biggest Muslim populations reflect this Asian centre of gravity. The largest of all is Indonesia, followed by Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Together these four South and Southeast Asian nations account for a very large slice of the global total. Egypt and Nigeria are the largest in the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa respectively. A striking detail is India: although Muslims are a minority there, the country is so populous that it holds one of the largest Muslim populations on earth. As Pew has noted, China is home to more Muslims than Syria, and Russia to more than several Arab countries combined, a reminder that large Muslim communities often live as minorities.
Majority and minority communities
Muslims form the majority in about 49 countries, and roughly three-quarters of the world's Muslims live in these Muslim-majority states. The remainder, more than a fifth, live as minorities, often in large numbers, in countries across the developing world. Only a small share, around 3%, lives in the more-developed regions of Europe, North America, Australia and Japan. You can explore that European picture in detail in Muslims in Europe.
A quarter of the world, and growing
Muslims made up an estimated 23% or so of the world's population around 2010, and that share has been rising. The reasons, a younger age structure, higher fertility in many Muslim-majority countries, and simple demographic momentum, are explained in our companion article on the future of the Muslim population. What the numbers make clear is that Islam is not a regional faith but a global one, present in nearly every country.
Statistics can tell you how many, but not who. To see the global Muslim community as living places rather than numbers, use MosqueFinder to find mosques anywhere, or browse the the interactive map to explore mosques around the world.