Every fourth person on Planet Earth is Muslim

Islam that originated in Arabian peninsula about 1400 years ago is now thriving and has reached every continent. This was revealed in a recent report by THE PEW FORUM on Religion and Public Life. This report is very comprehensive stating size and distribution of World’s Muslim Population as of 2009. The demographic study of more than world’s 200 countries reveals that there are around 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion. This said report also classifies Muslim population in to Sunni and Shiites as well with respect to various geographic regions.

The report also measures Muslim population according to each country and region. Europe for example has 38 million Muslims, constituting about 5% of its population. European Muslims make up slightly more than 2% of the world’s Muslim population. Whereas there are 4.6 million Muslims in American region out of which more than half or about 2.5 million are Muslims.

(Image used under Internet’s fair usage policy. Image Source: Boston.com)

Here are some factual excerpts from the report:

While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa.

More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.

Following is an interactive map showing Muslim population across the world:

(Map courtesy The Pew Forum: Roll over a country bubble to see its estimated 2009 Muslim population, the percentage of its population that is Muslim and the percentage of the world Muslim population it represents)

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