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Demographics

The top 25 Islamic peoples

Inspired by Steve Spaulding’s analysis of the Buddhist world (most of the remaining Buddhists are found in a small number of very large peoples, AD 2025 Buddhist Monitor, April 2005), I thought it would be interesting to do a similar analysis of Muslim peoples (using data from the World Christian Database, the same source of information as Steve’s study).

A search of the World Christian Database revealed 4,272 groups having some Muslims, with a total of 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. Of these, 4,094 groups have less than 1 million Muslims each. The total population of Muslims in these groups comes to 244 million, In other words, 95% of the groups having Muslims account just 18% of all Muslims; 82% of all Muslims are found in less than 5% of the groups.

This 5% amounts to 178 groups with a total Muslim population of greater than 1 million people. Altogether, they number 1,069 million Muslims. If we could concentrate on these 178, we might perhaps significant progress.

Further, out of these 178, just 49 groups have more than 5 million Muslims in them, coming to a total of 785 million Muslims—over half the total.

Finally, 25 groups (listed at right) have over 10 million Muslims each. Muslims represent over 90% of most of these groups; the Bengali of India and the Javanese of Indonesia are the only exceptions. In total, the population of these 25 comes to 616 million (46% of all Muslims in the world).

To make a substantial dent in the unreached world, mobilization and prayer networks could take on one, several, or all of these groups. Use existing prayer calendars or develop one of your own; assign missionaries to work with these groups in partnership with existing networks; or begin recruiting workers or finances for them!

Both security and the size of these groups are considerable obstacles. Fortunately, most of the 25 have strong existing partnerships focused on ministry to them. So starting work amongst any of these is not a matter of starting from scratch, but adding your strength to an existing network, which has already established ministry priorities and security protocols. Many regional partnerships touch these groups. If you are interested in getting involved, contact us and we will forward your name.

The pictures include, from left to right, the Algerians, Bengali, Deccani, Urdu, Javanese, and Persians, and come courtesy the Joshua Project website, www.joshuaproject.net…. Visit their site to view the unreached or download a copy of the database.

Top 25 Muslim Groups

Ctry	Name	Pop (millions)
alge	Algerian Arab	19.2
bang	Bengali	105.8
bang	Chittagonian	16.7
egyp	Egyptian Arab	42.9
egyp	Upper Egyptian Arab	20.2
indi	Bengali	78.3
indi	Deccani	13.7
indi	Urdu	56.2
indo	Javanese	56.3
indo	Madurese	12.8
indo	Sundanese	23.8
iran	Azerbaijani	11.3
iran	Persian	21.6
iran	Iraqi Arab	10.3
moro	Moroccan Arab	13.1
nige	Hausa	19.9
paki	Eastern Pathan	12.8
paki	Sindhi	18.9
paki	Southern Punjabi	15.7
paki	Urdu	12.1
paki	Western Punjabi	69.2
saud	Saudi Arab	18.4
syri	Syrian Arab	14.6
turk	Turk	47.3
uzbe	Northern Uzbek	21.1

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© 2006 Momentum Magazine.
Related: The Mission Manual · Justin Long's Annotated Links and Notes