Photo Credit: Sayyeddy via Flickr
Thousands of Muslims praying

There were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world as of 2015, or about 24% of the human race, according to the Pew Research Center. This makes Islam the world’s second-largest religion, after Christianity, but it is the fastest-growing religion. Pew predicts that, with current demographic trends remaining as they are today, there will be more Muslims than Christians by the year 2100.

Contrary to common belief, only 20% of the world’s Muslims are the Arabs who live in the Middle East and North Africa. A majority – 62% – the world’s Muslims are non-Arabs and live in the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey.

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Indeed, the largest Muslim population today is non-Arab, and lives in Indonesia. According to Pew, India, which will continue to be majority-Hindu, will have the largest Muslim population by 2050.

Here’s another fun stats: Pew predicts that 10% of all Europeans will be Muslim by 2050.

What about America? In 2015 there were an estimated 3.3 million Muslims living in the US, roughly 1% of the population – a Pew 2014 Religious Landscape Study found that 0.9% of US adults identify as Muslim.

A 2011 survey of Muslim Americans, conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, estimated there were 1.8 million Muslim adults (2.75 million Muslims of all ages) living in the US, the majority of whom – 63% – were immigrants.

By the year 2050, Pew predicts that Muslims will make up 2.1% of the US population, surpassing Jews.

Finally, a recent Pew report estimated that the Muslim share of immigrants granted permanent residency status (a.k.a. “green cards”) is up from 5% in 1992 to 10% in 2012. There were an estimated 100,000 Muslim immigrants to the US in 2012.

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