Muslim Population by Country: Introduction

It is not easy to determine with any degree of accuracy the total number of Muslims. For some countries, up-to-date information is not available. In other cases, official figures are highly suspect. Most attempts to calculate the Muslim population of individual countries begin with the CIA Factbook. This attempt is no exception. To produce a base figure for number of Muslims, we have used the country population figures and the percentage figure for Muslims shown in the latest edition of the country profiles in the CIA Factbook.

We have then checked these base figures against UN statistics and a number of internet sites - and adjusted them whenever it seemed appropriate.

There is one country, China, where estimates of the numbers of Muslims vary very widely. At the lower end is the official figure of around 20 million; at the top end, there are confident assertions that the Muslim population is 200 million. Without any great confidence, for the purposes of this exercise, we have settled on a figure of 37 million.

Our analysis of Muslim population by country gives us a global total of approximately 1.5 billion, or 22.5% of the world's population.