1.57 Billion Muslims Worldwide: "Asia Predominates"

The Pew Forum recently released the results of their comprehensive research on Muslims worldwide.¹  The study provides the size and distribution of the Muslim population across the world. The Forum, a project of the Pew Research Center, seeks to promote a deeper understanding of issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs.²

The study brings the total estimate to over 1.57 billion Muslims in the world.

There are more Muslims in the Asia-Pacific region than anywhere else in the world combined.  The countries with the largest number of Muslims in that region are Indonesia, Pakistan and India, which together accounts for more than a third (34%) of the world’s Muslim population.  Indonesia alone houses 202.9M Muslims, just a few percent shy of the entire Sub-Saharan African region’s Muslim population of 240.6M.  In fact, the Muslim population in Indonesia and Pakistan combined (376.9M) outranks the region known to be the center of Islam, the Middle East-North Africa (315.2M).

Together, Europe (38.1M) and the Americas (4.6M) have less than a two-digit share of the total count of Muslims in the world.  The United States has an estimated 2.5M, followed by Argentina and Canada respectively who each have less than a million Muslim residents.

The 2.5M count for the U.S.A rests within the wide range of previous estimates of 1M to 7M made over the past decade.³ Various sources also indicate that the largest group of Muslims in the country identify themselves as African American and that many reside in California—although New York has a larger share of Muslims based on total state population.

In New York City, the 24th United American Muslim Day Parade is expected to draw crowds on Sunday, October 18th.⁴  The parade will be along Madison Avenue starting at 41st Street and ending at 23rd Street where there will be a Food Festival and Bazaar.  Spearheaded by The Muslim Foundation of America and supported by several other organizations, the annual parade began to achieve their objective:  “to provide a platform to the Muslim community in the Tri-State to get together and join the main stream political arena of this country as we have adopted it as our homeland”.  The parade’s theme this year is “Understanding-Tolerance-Love”, lofty ideals that hopefully translate well both within our diverse U.S. communities and the rest of our conflict-ridden world.

¹Erik Gorski, ”Report: Global Muslim population hits 1.57 billion”, Associated Press, Oct. 8, 2009
²pewforum.org
³islam101.com
⁴muslimdayparade.com