India has the largest number of Muslims living as a minority community

Apart from having the third largest number of Muslims at over 160 million after Indonesia and Pakistan, India also has the largest number of Muslims living as a minority community, says a new study conducted in 232 countries.

While 80 per cent of the world’s 1.57 billion Muslims live in countries where Muslims are in the majority, significant numbers – about one-fifth of the world's Muslim population (or 317 million) - live as religious minorities in their home countries, according to the Forum on Religion and Public Life, a part of a US-based organisation, Pew Research Centre.

Of the roughly 317 million Muslims living as minorities, about 240 million live in five countries: India (161 million), Ethiopia (28 million), China (22 million), Russia (16 million) and Tanzania (13 million). Two of the 10 countries with the largest number of Muslims living as minorities are in Europe: Russia (16 million) and Germany (4 million).

"These minority populations are often quite large. For example, India, a Hindu-majority country, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. The Muslim population of Ethiopia is about as large as that of Afghanistan. China has more Muslims than Syria; Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined; and Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon," said the Pew report released yesterday.

"Of the 232 countries and territories included in this study, 50 are Muslim-majority. Out of these, however, more than six-in-10 (62 per cent) have a smaller Muslim population than do Russia and China individually," added the report.

The report also found that the Middle East-North Africa region contains the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries compared with other regions. Of the 20 countries and territories in the region, 17 have a population that is more than 75 percent Muslim, with Israel, Lebanon and Sudan being the only exceptions. In comparison, only 12 of 61 countries in Asia, 10 of 50 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and two of 50 countries in Europe (Kosovo and Albania) are 75 percent or more Muslim.

The report observed that more than 300 million Muslims, or a fifth of the world's Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. It also said that while Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60 per cent of the global Muslim population is in Asia. Indonesia and Pakistan have over 200 million and 174 million Muslims respectively.

Of the total Muslim population, 10-13 per cent are Shias and 87-90 per cent are Sunnis, said the report, adding that most Shias, between 68-80 per cent, live in just four countries, namely Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq.