Muslims are the world’s second-largest religious group and the fastest-growing major religion. They make up the vast majority of the population in the Middle East-North Africa region. In all other regions, Muslims are a religious minority, including in the Asia-Pacific region, which is home to the greatest number of Muslims.
Global change
The number of Muslims around the world grew 21% between 2010 and 2020, from 1.7 billion to 2.0 billion. Muslims grew twice as fast as the rest of the world’s population, which expanded by 10% during the same decade. As a result, Muslims grew as a share of the global population, from 24% to 26%.
Regional change
The number (or count) of Muslims grew in all geographic regions between 2010 and 2020, but the extent of the increase varied widely.
The rate of Muslim growth was the highest in North America, where Muslims numbered 5.9 million in 2020 (up 52%), followed by sub-Saharan Africa, where Muslims grew to 369 million (up 34%).
In every region, Muslims grew at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, with one exception. In the Latin America-Caribbean region, which has the smallest Muslim population, the number of Muslims increased by 6%, while the region’s non-Muslim population grew by 10%.
As a result, the percentage of Muslims rose in all regions outside of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Muslim share of the population increased the most in the Asia-Pacific region, where Muslims rose to 26% of the population in 2020 (up 1.4 percentage points). Meanwhile, Muslims grew to make up 33% of all residents in sub-Saharan Africa (up 0.8 points) and 6% of Europe’s population (up 0.7 points).
Regional distribution of Muslims
Since 2010, the world’s Muslim population has become slightly more concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, which is now home to 18% of the world’s Muslims (up 2 points).
Muslims have become slightly less concentrated in the Asia- Pacific region, which is home to 59% of all Muslims as of 2020 (down 2 points).
Countries with the highest Muslim counts
A third of Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan or India. Indonesia’s count is slightly ahead of the others: Roughly 240 million Muslims – around 12% of the world’s Muslims – are in Indonesia, as of 2020.
The 10 countries with the largest number of Muslims are home to a combined 1.3 billion Muslims, or 65% of the world’s total Muslim population.
In nine of these countries, Islam is the majority religion. India is an exception. The 213 million Muslims living in India as of 2020 make up only 15% of the country’s overall population.
Where did the Muslim share of the population change the most?
In five countries, the estimated share of the population identifying as Muslim changed substantially (by at least 5 percentage points). In Kazakhstan, Benin and Lebanon, the Muslim share of the population increased, while in Tanzania and Oman, the share of Muslims decreased.
In these countries, changes in the Muslim share of the population were often related to migration.
- Kazakhstan experienced the biggest increase in the Muslim share of its population (up 8 points). This change was partially driven by the departure of some Christians, as the share of Christians in Kazakhstan’s population fell from 27% in 2010 to 19% in 2020. (Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority country that tightly restricts religious activity.)
- We estimate that Benin also had an increase in the Muslim share of its population (up 8 points). However, some data sources suggest Muslim growth there could be more modest.20
- Lebanon also saw a substantial rise in the share of its population that is Muslim (up 5 points), fueled by refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war.21
- Oman experienced the largest drop in the share of Muslim residents (down 8 points) because many people migrated to the country, and these migrants were less likely to be Muslim than the native-born population. Between 2010 and 2020, Oman’s foreign-born population rose from 30% to about half of the country’s total inhabitants.22
In Tanzania, Muslims have lower fertility rates than non-Muslims, which contributed to a decline in the share of the country’s population that is Muslim (down 6 percentage points). Between 2010 and 2015, Muslims in Tanzania had an average of 4.6 children per woman, nearly one child fewer than Tanzanian women overall (5.5).
In Europe, several countries saw the Muslim share of their population grow due to a combination of immigration and higher-than-average fertility among Muslims. However, these increases did not pass the 5-point threshold in any European country. For example, the influx of Syrian war refugees contributed to modest growth in the percentage of Muslims in the populations of Sweden (up 4 points), Austria (up 3 points) and Germany (up 1 point).
Recommended Citation: Hackett, Conrad, Marcin Stonawski, Yunping Tong, Stephanie Kramer, Anne Shi and Dalia Fahmy. 2025. “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020.” Pew Research Center. doi: 10.58094/fj71-ny11.
