Study: Muslims = Quarter of World Population

A new study reveals nearly one in four people in the world practice Islam.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says the total global population is estimated to be 6.8 billion. Of this number, Muslims of all ages living in more than 200 countries in the world today total 1.57 billion or 23 percent.

When compared to Christianity, there are an estimated 2.1 billion Christians of all ages living in the world today.

The report gives precise numbers on a religious population whose size has long been debated.

The study also maps out where the world's Muslim population lives in a very comprehensive fashion. It also contradicts the idea that Muslims are Arabs and Arabs are Muslims.

Here are some of the key findings of the Pew Forum's study Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population.

• 60 percent of all practicing Muslims in the world live in Asia.
• 20 percent live in the Middle East and North Africa.
• 15 percent live in sub-Saharan Africa.
• 2.4 percent live in Europe and less than 1 percent in the Americas.
• The world's largest Muslim population can be found in Indonesia. There are more than 200 million Muslims living there.

The report finds that India, which is majority Hindu, has the third largest Muslim population of any nation with more than 161 million Muslims. Germany has four million Muslims and that's more than the entire country of Lebanon.

There are concerns about the growth of Islam, because in Muslim countries ruled by Islamic law, religious liberty is rare or nonexistent.

"Look at how Christians today are treated in countries where Islam is dominant," said Geert Wilders, Dutch politician and filmmaker. "Try buying a bible in Saudi Arabia. Try to visit a church in Iran. Try to do anything Christian in an Islamic country. There is no room for it. They are intolerant."

Source: CBN.com - http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2009/October/New-Study-Maps-Global-Muslim-Population-/

Police, Arabs clash around Jerusalem

Israeli police and Arab Muslim residents of Jerusalem clashed in several parts of the Israeli capital on Friday, after Palestinian leaders and local Muslim clerics urged the Arabs to rise up in "defense of the Al Aksa Mosque."

The Arab leaders claimed that by restricting entry for Friday prayers atop the Temple Mount to Muslim men over the age of 50, Israel was laying siege to the mosques that occupy the biblical holy site. Israel regularly impalements such measures when intelligence suggests younger Arabs may be planning violence.

Israeli security forces managed to keep the Old City and Temple Mount area violence-free, but more raucous Arab elements did clash with police in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ras al-Amud and Sur Baher.

In the Ras al-Amud confrontation, some 200 Israeli officers decked out in riot gear and shields had to push back thousands of stone throwing rioters. Once the police got close enough to buildings in the neighborhood, local women began throwing potted plants and stones at the Israelis from open windows and rooftop balconies.

Five Israeli officers were wounded in that clash.

In Sur Baher, which is near the Jerusalem-area kibbutz of Ramat Rachel, hundreds of Arabs hurled stones at police and tried to approach Jewish areas, but were stopped without injuries on either side.

Source: Israel today - http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=19724