A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries
finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in
the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world
population of 6.8 billion. 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. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has
the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Indeed,
more than half of the 20 countries and territories1 in that
region have populations that are approximately 95% Muslim or
greater. 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. Of the total Muslim populati