Some Surprising Facts About Muslims

Predisposed attitudes about anything, invariably are belied by reality, and exposed as being completely wrong, more often than not. Once a person becomes aquainted with the facts, it may be difficult to express the error in thinking. Consider these facts:

• China has almost the same number of Muslims as Saudi Arabia.
• Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.
• Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon.
• India has one of the world's largest concentrations of Muslims.
• Of countries with Muslim populations, the U.S. has one of the smallest.

These facts became known to me because of The Pew Forum, and an interactive map they have created, documenting religions around the world, and where they are concentrated.

You can also download the entire pdf report.

"...this study is just the beginning for Pew, says Alan Cooperman, the Pew Forum's associate director for research. It is the beginning of an ambitious project to map the world's religions and explore their growth and the attitudes of their adherents. Pew's next phase is to project population growth among Muslims 10 and 20 years from now. Those numbers will be released next year.

Pew also recently completed face-to-face interviews with 19,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa (where the vast majority of people are either Christian or Muslim), where they were questioned about religious beliefs, practices, pocketbook issues, the degree of overlap between the majority religions, traditional religious beliefs and attitudes of Muslims and Christians towards each other.

Pew is also mapping the Christian population, its projected growth country-by-country, and Christians' beliefs and practices. Then it will will move onto the other major world religions, said Cooperman."

I figured someone might find this stuff interesting, because I know I did....