Islam is a religion, and its followers are known as Muslims. It is not tied to any specific country and there are Muslims everywhere in the world. There are countries in which Muslims are the majority, and sometimes it is a sizeable majority, but nowhere is there an entirely Muslim country (for example, even Saudi Arabia has about a 97% Muslim population). About one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population live as religious minorities in their home countries. Of the roughly 317 million Muslims living as minorities, about 240 million – about three-quarters – live in five countries: India (161 million), Ethiopia (28 million), China (22 million), Russia (16 million) and Tanzania (13 million).


Just like Christianity, Islam has countries with many followers and countries with few, and countries with a history of the religion, and countries to which it is newer.

The supposition that Muslims, or those who speak up on their behalf, should or even could go to 'the Muslim place' is not only based on the false assumption that such a place exists, but also ignores that anybody, born in any country, with ancestors back many generations from that country, could be a Muslim. This supposition also promotes the belief that being Muslim is mutually exclusive from so-called 'Western' civil life and society. This is not at all true, and the peaceful existence of millions of Muslims as minority religions in countries around the world attests to this. One can be Muslim and patriotic. One can dislike the politics of some countries with a Muslim majority population, and be Muslim. Islam is a religion, not an all-encompassing identity, and it is as varied as any other religion.

Data from a super document "MAPPING THE GLOBAL MUSLIM POPULATION: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Muslim Population. October 2009" by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. http://pewforum.org/newassets/images/reports/Muslimpopulation/Muslimpopulation.pdf