Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims comprise the two main sects within Islam. Because data on the percentages of Sunni and Shia Muslims are rough estimates in many countries, this study presents them as ranges. 57 Sunnis will continue to make up an overwhelming majority of Muslims in 2030. The number of Sunnis is projected to […]
Fertility Fertility rates have fallen in most Muslim-majority countries in recent decades. Yet they remain, on average, higher than in the rest of the developing world and considerably higher than in more-developed countries. This is one of the main reasons that the global Muslim population is projected to rise both in absolute numbers and in […]
This study uses the standard demographic method of making population projections. Called the cohort-component method, it takes the age and sex structure of a population into account when projecting the population forward in time. This has the advantage of recognizing that an initial, baseline population can be relatively “young,” with a high proportion of people […]
Project Advisers Charles F. Westoff, Princeton University John Casterline, Ohio State University Tukufu Zuberi, University of Pennsylvania Peter Xenos, University of Hawaii Amaney Jamal, Princeton University Carl Haub, Population Reference Bureau Mohamed Ayad, ICF Macro Consultants Below is the list of demographers and social scientists with whom the Pew Forum consulted to arrive at the […]
The number of Muslims in the Asia-Pacific region – which, for purposes of this report, includes not only East Asian countries such as China but also countries as far west as Turkey – is projected to increase from about 1 billion in 2010 to about 1.3 billion in 2030. Nearly three in- ten people living […]
The Muslim population in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to grow by nearly 60% in the next 20 years, from 242.5 million in 2010 to 385.9 million in 2030. Because the region’s non- Muslim population also is growing at a rapid pace, Muslims are expected to make up only a slightly larger share of the region’s […]
Ayatollah Title given to a senior-ranking Shiite religious scholar. Caliphate The line of the Prophet Muhammad’s successors as the temporal and spiritual leaders of Islam after his death in the 7th century. The caliphate existed in one form or another from 632 until 1924, when the Ottoman caliphate officially ended. Cemaat Turkish variation of Arabic […]
The Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth are part of a worldwide network of largely Saudi-funded groups that maintain offices in many Muslim-majority countries as well as in European nations with relatively large numbers of Muslims, such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The primary focus of these organizations is […]
The Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’at-i Islami are separate movements that tend to draw the bulk of their members from different ethnic groups (Arabs and South Asians, respectively). Nevertheless, both groups are rooted in a political ideology, frequently described as “Islamist,” that calls for the establishment of a distinctly Islamic system of government. The Muslim Brotherhood is […]
In addition to other, more conventional social and religious movements, a number of networks built around religious scholars or popular preachers also have a lot of influence among Muslims in Western Europe. While these networks are in many ways separate and distinct from other groups, they often intersect with and draw on the influence of […]