[center] Nearly 1 in 4 people worldwide is Muslim, report says
[/center]

By Richard Allen Greene CNN


(CNN) -- Nearly one in four people worldwide is Muslim -- and they are not necessarily where you might think, according to an extensive new study that aims to map the global Muslim population.

Nearly two out of three of the world's Muslims are in Asia, stretching from Turkey to Indonesia.

Nearly two out of three of the world's Muslims are in Asia, stretching from Turkey to Indonesia.

India, a majority-Hindu country, has more Muslims than any country except for Indonesia and Pakistan, and more than twice as many as Egypt.

China has more Muslims than Syria.

Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon.

And Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya put together.

Nearly two out of three of the world's Muslims are in Asia, stretching from Turkey to Indonesia.

The Middle East and north Africa, which together are home to about one in five of the world's Muslims, trail a very distant second.

There are about 1.57 billion Muslims in the world, according to the report, "Mapping the Global Muslim Population," by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. That represents about 23 percent of the total global population of 6.8 billion.

There are about 2.25 billion Christians, based on projections from the 2005 World Religions Database.

Brian Grim, the senior researcher on the Pew Forum project, was slightly surprised at the number of Muslims in the world, he told CNN.

"Overall, the number is higher than I expected," he said, noting that earlier estimates of the global Muslim population have ranged from 1 billion to 1.8 billion.

The report can -- and should -- have implications for United States policy, said Reza Aslan, the best-selling Iranian-American author of "No God but God."

Fact Box

Report: Top 10 Muslim countries, by population

1. Indonesia: 202,867,000 (country is 88.2 percent Muslim)

2. Pakistan: 174,082,000 (country is 96.3 percent Muslim)

3. India: 160,945,000 (country is 13.4 percent Muslim)

4. Bangaldesh: 145,312,000 (country is 89.6 percent Muslim)

5. Egypt: 78,513,000 (country is 94.6 percent Muslim)

6. Nigeria: 78,056,000 (country is 50.4 percent Muslim)

7. Iran: 73,777,000 (country is 99.4 percent Muslim)

8. Turkey: 73,619,000 (country is about 98 percent Muslim)

9. Algeria: 34,199,000 (country is 98 percent Muslim)

10. Morocco: 31,993,000 (country is about 99 percent Muslim)

Source: "Mapping the Global Muslim Population," The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

"Increasingly, the people of the Middle East are making up a smaller and smaller percentage of the worldwide Muslim community," he told CNN by phone.

Source
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/07/muslim.world.population/index.html

world war 3 is inevitable

God forbid bad thing, so the world has 25% Suicide Bombers ready to Strike

@wilywily

Yeah

Alhamdulillah.

more firewood for hell.

WilyWily:

God forbid bad thing, so the world has 25% Suicide Bombers ready to Strike

sleek29:

more firewood for hell.

Gentlemen, intellectuall objectivity is a priceless intellectual virtue. Bright minds would not be so simpleton in analysis, arrogance is when the truth is hard to accept. You do not have to be muslims but when you are confroted by a fact it is nice to accept and move on not making inflammatory remarks which has no objective and no aim.

@ topic

so?

@topic
utter rubbish!!if i may ask,how did they come about the 50.4% figure in nigeria?
what census did they use??
the disputed sensus which was highly and unrealistically inflated to favour political interests in the north?
if not then when did they conduct their own religious census that we nigerians were unaware of??

did they factor in,or do a proper count of the pentecostal christian members springing up all over nigeria bearing in mind that many of the converts still bear islamic names?
some people are so gullible that anything a white man says has to be the truth,
the way i view statistics or any assertion is if i look through it and i find a falsity,then the totality of the report is unbelievable and good only for the thrash bin.

as for muslims,this is only good enough for a feel good report so enjoy

GODSON2009:

@topic
utter rubbish!!if i may ask,how did they come about the 50.4% figure in nigeria?
what census did they use??
the disputed sensus which was highly and unrealistically inflated to favour political interests in the north?
if not then when did they conduct their own religious census that we nigerians were unaware of??

did they factor in,or do a proper count of the pentecostal christian members springing up all over nigeria bearing in mind that many of the converts still bear islamic names?
some people are so gullible that anything a white man says has to be the truth,
the way i view statistics or any assertion is if i look through it and i find a falsity,then the totality of the report is unbelievable and good only for the thrash bin.

as for muslims,this is only good enough for a feel good report so enjoy

Why will you commit suicide over on population census? Report could have been 80% chrisitians either.

if the report was 80% christians i would have challenged its validity as well,the point here is that how did they come about their flawed figures,or are my reservations not valid?
is the census figures not in contention and used as a political tool to score more local governments for the north?

what will happen to this world, if all 25% Muslims of the world decide to carry out Suicide Bombing.

NATIONAL President of Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor yesterday faulted figures published by an American research forum which claimed that about 50 per cent of Nigerians are Muslims, challenging the group to tell the world the source of such statistics.

Pastor Oritsejafor also commended the House of Representatives for summoning the Borno State governor, Alhaji Modu Sheriff and the Director-General of the NYSC, Brigadier-Gen. Yusuf Bomoi to explain their efforts at investigating the murder of a female youth corps member in the Borno State capital, Maiduguri by persons yet to be identified.

Reacting to the October 2009 report by Pew Forum which gave the number of Muslims living in Nigeria as over 78 million, representing five per cent of Islamic adherents in the world, Pastor Oritsejafor said the figures are not acceptable because they do not represent the reality on ground in the country. The report says there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world.

According to him, the 2006 census exercise which put the population of Nigeria at 140 million deliberately avoided statistics on religion because then President Olusegun Obasanjo prevailed on the Christian community to hearken to the pleas of their Muslim counterparts to exclude the religious clause from the census data.

“So, if the Nigerian government cannot say specifically the number of Christians and Muslims in the country, how then did an American forum come up with such unsubstantiated figures of a particular religious group in the country?” he asked, stressing that despite “the nation’s imperfections, there are certain things we should not accept hook line and sinker.

“I can contest the figures because I am aware of what happened just before the last census when the Christians initially insisted that the religious clause should be included in the census data, so that leaders on both sides can plan well for their adherents,” he added “but the president bowed to pressure from Islamic leaders who insisted that the clause was not necessary.”

Oritsejafor therefore argued that if the recent census figures could not ascertain the number of Christians and Muslims in the country, “what then is the source of the figures Pew Forum is currently parading in its report titled ‘Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A report on the size and distribution of the world’s Muslim population?’”

Not wanting to say that the published figures could have been sponsored for reasons know only to the people behind it, Pastor Oritsejafor also queried some part of the report which says that one in every three Muslims in Sub_Sahara Africa live in Nigeria, saying that there is no basis for the conclusions because the recent Nigerian census had not said.

Also reacting to the recent murder of a member of the National Youth Service Corps, Miss Grace Ushang in Maiduguri, Borno State by persons yet to be identified, the cleric expressed gratitude that the House of Representatives has summoned the state governor over the matter.

According to him, oftentimes when these things happen in the North there is always a conspiracy of silence which has not helped the leadership of the two dominant religions who had been seeking ways of arresting religious uprising in that region.

“It is gratifying that politicians have now seen the need to intervene in incessant crisis in the North,” the PFN helmsman said, adding “hitherto, people have seen such crises as purely religious matters that should be addressed by religious leaders, but now one can heave a sigh of relief that politicians are appreciating the need to consider the political implications of such crises.”

He urged members of the House of Representatives to get to the very bottom of this particular incident because the NYSC is one of the few institutions that has held this nation as one indivisible country.

“Not too long ago a number of them were killed in a religious crisis in Jos and now this. We must bring to book the culprits before parents will begin withdraw their children from the scheme for security reasons,” Oritsejafor cautioned.

source;http://www.nigeriamasterweb.com/paperfrmes.html

While my heart is heart is heavy because of the death of the young person, may Allah give the strength to move on to the family that lost the child. Death is always a tragedy because somebody experiences the loss of a life to be missed forever.

As to the institution of NYSC, it is true that it is one of the few threads that tie the nation as one, considering what is even displayed here on Nairaland of tribalism, in today's world of the Christians! However, what is it that the Pastor is crying about of religious population assessement? If I take his opinion, as he said; the situation on ground, is that a none practicing muslim is not necessarily a christian, but an irreligious person! We also have the same condition in Christianity, and the Christians on Nairaland have argued this point, too many times; a non christlike christian is not a christian!

And we see that even the proponent of this idea, eg, Sleek29 and gang are not Christlike and cant be therefore Christians, but only in name and identity but not in the true substance of it! Heck, who do do that; even Ohsisi who loves Jesus so much deviated from him when it comes to marriage and what not: eating, am sure she eats pork, starting a riot and chaotic condition/situation; calling people will land them in hellfire/lake of fire, according to Jesus (yet he called people fools; can you imagine that or is this the case of do as I instruct you, regardless of my disregarding my own instructions?).


For Sure apart from Ekiti State, and maybe Ondo, it is absolutely clear that the rest of yoruba people are more Islamic than Christians. Igbo people by head count is not as many as the Arewas, while each is predominantly of opposite religious affiliations! Is the pew reseach people far from the truth? Hardly and it may be that this is the gimmick of the American Christianity to put the screws on the Nigerians. But InshaAllah, the intention, will be known and if it is biased towards Islam, it will definitely fail. For Jesus cant help anyone and he is not a savior except that he warned his people to safety, if they followed his prophetic order in his time! The same was the condition of Moses, whom Pharaoh did not listen to, so as much as haman and Qaruun and samirii (Lanaa tUllahi alal Kafiruun!).

lol you are here spreading your delusions again, which tribe constitutes the majority of redeemed members if not the same yorubas,how r bout winners?depper life i think has a large mix of other tribes
what of the two c.a.c trem and other denominations latter rain,have you been to house on the rock which i attended for the first time in august this year and see how many services they conduct on a single sunday?
so if you still believe that yorubas as muslims or practising muslims then i guess they must have the highest population in nigeria

the igbos might not be but we are not talking of a tribe here but a religion hence we have igbos,a chunk of hausas,a large no of yorubas,a majority of south south e.t.c who are christians so your calculations are way off the mark

'indeed, they rejected the truth when it came to them, but there will come to them the news of the torment which they used to mock. Have they not seen how many generation before them God had destroyed whom He established on earth such as God have not establish you ?' Quran 6:5-6

@Abuzola
Man, am not waiting for Islamic People God to destroy me, already 25% his Children are wearing their Suicide belt waiting to finish me.

Some people are very funny. Whenever something does not rhyme with their shallow thinking, they behave like a caged animal. . .

Move forward Islam, not like the other false religions.