Muslim world  

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The term Muslim world, also known as Islamic world, has different meanings. In a religious sense, the Islamic Ummah refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, the Muslim Ummah refers to Islamic civilization, exclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization. In a modern geopolitical sense, the term "Islamic Nation" usually refers collectively to Muslim-majority countries, states, districts, or towns.

Although Islamic lifestyles emphasize unity and defense of fellow Muslims, schools and branches (see Shia–Sunni relations, for example) exist. In the past, both Pan-Islamism and nationalist currents have influenced the status of the Greater Middle East.

As of 2015, over 1.7 billion or about 23.4% of the world population are Muslims. By the percentage of the total population in a region considering themselves Muslim, 24.8% in Asia-Oceania do, 91.2% in the Middle East-North Africa, 29.6% in Sub-Saharan Africa, around 6.0% in Europe, and 0.6% in the Americas.

Majority Muslim nations

As of 2018, there were fifty-one countries in the world in which more than 50% of the population identify as Muslims. These countries spread from North Africa, to the Middle East, to the Balkans and Central Asia, to Southeast Asia. While many nations contain a strong Muslim presence, majority Muslim nations, by definition, have more Muslims as citizens than non-Muslims. Not all majority Muslim states, however, have Islam as their established religion. Turkey, for example, is a prominent Muslim country in which 99% of the population follows some form of Islam. However, there is no official religion. The state is secular. Nigeria is also a majority Muslim country which is officially secular.

Most majority Muslim nations, however, recognize Islam as the official state religion. Furthermore, many states identify a specific derivative of the Islamic faith as their official religion. For example, sunni Islam is the official state religion of: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Somalia, and the United Arab Emirates. Shia Islam is the official religion of Iran, which is a theocracy. Some minority Islamic sects are official state religions as well.Ibadi, a minority school within Islam, is the official religion of Oman.

Not all states in the Muslim World institutionalize a distinction between the sects of Islam. In Pakistan and Iraq, Islam as a faith, is recognized as the official religion. All sects or schools are included. In Egypt, freedom of religion is extended to the Abrahamic religions even though Sunni Islam is the state-sponsored religion. Similarly, Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim country, guarantees freedom of religion but only recognizes six official religions. Islam is one of and the most prominent of the six. Despite a common religion, majority Muslim nations are quite disparate in terms of size, population, demographic composition, and the legal framework of religion.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Muslim world" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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