How Many Muslims Are There?
Number of Muslims in the world:
Estimates of the total number of Muslims in the world vary greatly:
0.700 billion or more, Barnes & Noble Encyclopedia 1993
0.817 billion, The Universal Almanac (1996)
0.951 billion, The Cambridge Factfinder (1993)
1.100 billion, The World Almanac (1997)
1.200 billion, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic relations)
At a level of 1.2 billion, they represent about 22% of the world’s population. They are the second largest religion in the world. Only Christianity is larger, with 33% of the world’s inhabitants.
Islam is growing about 2.9% per year. This is faster than the total world population which increases about 2.3% annually. It is thus attracting a progressively larger percentage of the world’s population.
Ethnic origins of Muslims in the U.S.:
According to the “Faith Communities Today” report, the ethnic origins of regular participants in U.S. mosques are as follows: South Asian (Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Afghani) = 33 %
African-America = 30 %
Arab = 25 %
Sub-Saharan African = 3.4 %
European (Bosnian, Tartar, Kosovar, etc.) = 2.1 %
White American = 1.6 %
Southeast Asian ( Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino) = 1.3 %
Caribbean = 1.2 %
Turkish = 1.1 %
Iranian = 0.7 %
Hispanic/Latino = 0.6 %
Muslims in Canada:
Unlike the U.S. which does not tabulate individuals’ religion, the Canadian census asks people what their religion is. Statistics Canada reports that 253,260 Canadians identified themselves as Muslims (0.9% of the total population) during the 1991 census. Those figures are believed to be an under-estimate, because some Muslims would be reluctant to reveal their religion out of fear.
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