not much. off the top of my head, indonesia has like 150 million. malaysia has around 30 million. pakistan has another 80 million. bangeladesh probably has a good 40 million. india has 100 million. africa (including egypt) must have at least 400 million. turkey has around 40 million. iran and afghanistan has around 60 million. central asia + china + former USSR has around 20 million. there must be a good 10 million or so muslims living in europe, america, and elsewhere. even if we include iraq (25 million or so) as an arab nation, there couldn't be more than 150 million muslims in the entire arabian peninsula. maybe if we include egypt, the number would be a bit greater. am i even in the ballpark? i remember reading somewhere that there are a good 1 billion muslims worldwide.
I heard part of a radio interview with a Muslim woman who wrote a book about this. I only know the percentage figure that she cited. Can you convert your numbers to percentages? Those who wish to take stabs at it, express it as a percentage of total Muslims that are Arab. I'll report her answer (unverified) later.
malaysia's population is only like 50-60% muslim. the rest are mainly chinese and indians who are either christians, hindus, buddhists or taoists. probably the same in all other muslim countries.
I would guess 10-12%, which is why so many people get offended when Islam in general is associated with terrorism.
Surprised you which way. You do know its the largest religion in the world as far as followers are concerned don't you.
well it is... i am not christian, but there are very few christian terrorist groups around. i know they exist, but not on the level that islamic based terrorist/seperatist/whatever groups exist. i don't want to get into the argument that they are not really muslims if they are terrorists...i think we all know this...but they base their beliefs from islam even if they are mutated. i would certainly venture to say that most terrorism today is committed by islamic groups. i know terrorism can be construed differently by different people, so maybe i should say it seems like the most conflict in the world comes from islam and where it is concentrated at. look at india, africa, middle east, china, and so on. maybe that is just my layman opinion or stereotypical opinion, but it seems like most of the major conflicts in the world today come from areas or people spouting islamic rhetoric. i'd say 2nd would be some of the religious cults in japan. they are very big, well funded, and speak some pretty scary stuff. i forgot the name of the one who did the sarin gas attack, but they supposedly have a chem/bio weapons program on the level of what we believed iraq's was before the 1st gulf war. further it is my understand that they are still operating and going strong even after the attack. just my $.02
I know that. I was surprised that only 13% of the world's Muslims are Arab. I would have guesstimated it to be much higher.
in the US media the terms 'muslim' and 'arab' are almost synonymous. few people realize that there are more muslims than their are arabs. assuming that all arabs are muslims is like assuming all white people are christians and all non-white people are 'other'
The most recent data I could find was from 1994, but they list Christianity as the largest religion, with Roman Catholicism have more followers than all schools of Islam combined. link
<b>No research allowed?</b> U.A.E. Saudi Arabia Iraq Kuwait Egypt Syria Oman Yemen Lebanon Tunisia Morocco Algeria Might have accidently stuck a North African country in the group that doesn't belong. Probably missing some small countries. I think that makes up what is considered to be Arab countries. Other than Egypt, none have what is considered to have a huge population......so the percentage of Muslims that are Arabs would be rather small. <hr color=red> Lil, Your numbers are off quite a bit on some of those countries: Pakistan has a population of 150 million with roughly 95% Muslim. India has probably 150 - 160 million Muslims. Indonesia probably has in the neighborhood of 175 million Muslims. The number you gave for Bangladesh sounds low....but haven't looked at their population figures in a few years and it doesn't readily come to mind. Pakistan + India + Indonesia + Bangladesh probably have 500 - 600 million Muslims. If you count: Egypt Tunisa Morroco Nigeria Sudan Algeria Somalia etc as Africa.......I am not sure they would hit the 400 million mark that you listed.
I would have guessed 15% of the total population, but another thing is the two different types. The sunn'i, which is what the majority is, dont recognize the shi'ets who claim themselves as true muslims, I'm guesssing a good 2 percent of the arab population is shi'et so that leaves about 13% sunny muslims.
Of course research is allowed... eventually. I wanted to get the measure of numerous opinions before posting the actual stat. I was just curious to see if people over-estimated it as much as I was inclined to.
