Landmark Study: Nearly 1 in 4 People is Muslim

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20091009/landmark-study-nearly-1-in-4-people-is-muslim/index.html

[The Christian Post] 14 Oct 2009--Nearly one out of every four persons in the world today is Muslim, according to the results of a comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries.

Though estimates on the size of the global Muslim population have ranged widely in the past, from one billion to 1.8 billion, the new study by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life puts to rest the uncertainty, pinning the number of Muslims of all ages living in the world today at 1.57 billion.

The study also revealed more clearly how Muslims are distributed in the world, noting that more than 60 percent of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20 percent is in the Middle East and North Africa.

Not surprisingly, the Middle East-North Africa region was found to have the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries, with more than half of the 20 countries and territories in that region having populations that are approximately 95 percent Muslim or greater.

But the study also revealed that the world’s minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. And China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.