No member has submitted a thread about them yet. Although us mods do sometimes start threads. It is best for the members to start threads in matters that are of concern to them.

I think one thing that changes the types of threads submitted is the diversity of the membership.

There are times when the majority of the people posting are non-Muslim and at those times the submitted posts will reflect what is of interest to them. Some days it seems that that of the posters are the pre-teens and younger. On those times the submitted threads will be what they submit. And so it goes.

Please feel free to submit a thread about anything that is of concern to you. But, remember the threads in World affairs are only approved once per day between 9 and 11 PM GMT. They may be submitted at any hour, but that is the time they will be reviewed.

I am really surprised nobody has submitted anything about Algeria. I thought many members would be submitting that story.

Thank you RightousLady,

If anyone desires to copy that as a thread and post it as a seperate thread, please do so.

However, if any replies are made in this thread and take this thread off-topic the replies will be deleted. That is a separate topic and needs to be discussed in it's own thread.

that is correct. However if we are in sufficient health and financial able, it is an obligation and no excuses allowed. It is to be done at least once in our lifetime. That is the required. So if we have a year we can do it and don't, then get in an accident and can never travel agin. we have failed in our obligation.

And with that, we all get back to the topic at hand. Any further off-topic posts will be deleted.

Contemporary figures for Islam are usually between 900 million and 1.4 billion, with 1 billion being a figure frequently given in comparative religion texts, probably because it's such a nice, round number. The largest and best known branches of Islam are Sunni and Shi'ite. More.
Many Muslims (and some non-Muslim) observers claim that there are more practicing Muslims than practicing Christians in the world. Adherents.com has no reason to dispute this. It seems likely, but we would point out that there are different opinions on the matter, and a Muslim may define "practicing" differently than a Christian. In any case, the primary criterion for the rankings on this page is self-identification, which has nothing to do with practice.

Smaller groups within Islam include Sufis (although some Sufis regard their practice of Sufism as pan-denominational or non-denominational), Druze, the U.S.-based Nation of Islam (previously known as "Black Muslims"), and Ahmadiyya. As is true with all major religions, there are adherents within all branches of Islam who consider some of or all of the other branches heterodox or not actually part of their religion. But these classifications are based primarily on historical lineage and self-identification. Protestations and disagreements based on exclusivistic internal concepts of belief or practice are normal, but are largely immaterial with regards to historical, taxonomic and statistical classification.

Branch Number of Adherents

• Sunni - 940,000,000
• Shiite - 120,000,000
• Ahmadiyya - 10,000,000 *
• Druze - 450,000

Note: As with all other religions listed on this page (including Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism), not all historical branches of Islam consider each other acceptably orthodox. The numerically largest branch of Islam, Sunnis, believe that adherence to the five pillars of Islam and acceptance of certain key doctrinal positions are requisite for an individual's classification as a Muslim. Statistical data collection and secular/academic classification, however, are primarily based on self-identification and historical considerations.
The Druze, for example, are not considered part of the numerically dominant (i.e. "mainstream") Muslim grouping. But Druze are classified from a secular/historical perspective as a branch of Islam because they are derived from a branch of Shi'ite Islam. Having developed independently for hundreds of years, their cultural and religious self-concept is primarily Druze, without regard to how outside groups perceive or classify them. Nevertheless, they retain some self-concept as Muslims in addition to their clear historical ties.

This is merely a list of major branches of Islam. There are other groups which fall outside of the groups listed here. In the United States the Nation of Islam has varied widely in numerical and ideological prominence among American Muslims. It has variously been considered both heretical and acceptable by other Muslims. Sufism has been variously classified as a separate branch, a pan-Muslim movement, an order, a discipline, and as heretical or acceptable, as viewed by other groups. Movements such as the Moorish Science Temple and the Five Percenters have arisen from time to time, but have remained numerically minor. On balance, of course, Islam has exhibited far less division into different branches than other large religions.

World's Most Muslim Nations
The populations of the following countries are almost entirely Muslim (About 99.5% or more of the native populations, and nearly all of the foreign workers, are Muslim.) Listed alphabetically.

• Bahrain
• Comoros
• Kuwait
• Maldives
• Mauritania
• Mayotte
• Morocco
• Oman
• Qatar
• Somalia
• Saudi Arabia
• Tunisia
• United Arab Emirates
• Western Sahara
• Yemen

Top 10 Largest National Muslim Populations
Country Number
of Muslims

• Indonesia 170,310,000
• Pakistan 136,000,000
• Bangladesh 106,050,000
• India 103,000,000
• Turkey 62,410,000
• Iran 60,790,000
• Egypt 53,730,000
• Nigeria 47,720,000
• China 37,108,000

China should clearly be included among the top 10 largest national Muslim communities, although it was not on the list in Russell Ash's book, which is the main source of information for this list. Reliable religious statistics are difficult to obtain from this Communist nation, and the actual number of Muslims in China may be greater than the figure presented above. Mojtaba Shabani wrote to Adherents.com with the following comments:

The Muslim population in China is 11% by Muslim sources. This is based on the fact the ethnic "Hui" group are predominantly Muslim, and 9% of the population belong to this group. And then there are Uigurs and other Turkic people in addition to that, mostly in northwestern China, who constitute the remaining 2%... 11% would be around 120 million.

Adherents.com has no argument with Mr. Shabani's calculations, but as we currently have no published references supporting the higher figure we are using the CIA figure in the list above, with the caveat that it is probably too low and, according to Mr. Shabani, the CIA is biased against Muslims.

U.S. States With Highest Proportion
of Muslims in the Population
State Percent

• New York 0.80%
• California 0.60
• New Jersey 0.60
• Washington, D.C. 0.60
• Illinois 0.40
• Massachusetts 0.40
• Ohio 0.40
• Rhode Island 0.40

This data set is from the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification, conducted by the City University of New York, based on self-identification, as collected through a nationwide phone survey of 113,000 people.

http://www.adherents.com/

I know Islam is growing, but that is largely due to the birth rates.

Does anybody know specifically the conversion rate to Islam, particularly in the West?

Thanks!

Assalaamu Alaikum

There are couple of threads on this subject.

http://www.islamicboard.com/basics-i...-religion.html

http://www.islamicboard.com/world-af...-official.html (Islam shows fastest growing religion on earth: OIC official)

http://www.islamicboard.com/world-af...-religion.html (Fastest Growing Religion?)

http://www.islamicboard.com/basics-i...ion-earth.html

It is rather difficult to calculate the numbers of new Muslims in the US as to by birth or conversion. However, if you agree with the figures I quoted a few posts back the number of Muslims in the US tripled from the Years 2001 to 2006.

I would suspect that rate of growth would have to be primarily from conversion increases rather than birth rate.

to get that type of growth from births alone there would have had to been 2 babies born for each US Muslim (Male and Female) here in 2001
that seems a to be a nearly impossible rate. Most logical would be that it is about an equal number of reverts as births.

I think we simply don't know for the US or worldwide, at least I could not find any research on the subject. However, in Holland in 2005 the National Statistics Bureau estimated that out of the 1 million Muslims there were about 5 to 10 thousand Dutch converts. Most of the converts were women who married a Muslim man.

For Malaysia:

Conversions to Islam all over Malaysia:

1990 - 3,826
1991 - 3,753
1992 - 4,512
1993 - 5,130
1994 - 5,470
1995 - 5,401
1996 - 5,924
1997 - 6,628
1998 - 5,598
1999 - 4,924
2000 - 5,445
2001 - 4,900
2002 - 6,891
2003 - 6,751
2004 - 7,377

Source: Laman Informasi Islam (Islam Information Site)

http://www.islam.gov.my/informasi/

I dont care even if Islam is indeed the largest religion in the world. I care about the quality of the Ummah, not the size. That is why I consider Christians to be losers even if theyr are the largest.