The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

demographics

According to a 2009 Pew survey, the worldwide population of Muslims is 1.57 billion, representing 23 percent of the estimated global population. The largest cultural block of Muslims is in South Asia (mainly Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India). Although India has a minority of Muslims, it has the third largest Muslim population of any nation, following Indonesia and then Pakistan. Over 85 percent of Muslims are Sunni, and the remaining are Shi‘i. The largest population of Shi‘is is in Iran, followed by Pakistan, India, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. Minority Shi‘i populations, such as the international Isma‘ilis or the ‘Alawis of Syria, are significant less for their numbers than for their cultural or political influence. Of the world’s Muslims, less than 20 percent live in the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa.

Muslim populations have tended to have a higher growth rate, on average, than the global population. As a result, the overall proportion of Muslims in the world is on the rise, and an increasing number of Muslims are young. A combination of these two factors (growth and youth) sets the framework for contemporary discourses on Muslim demographics in light of heightened security concerns that prevail in Western nations. Islamic positions on abortion and contraception, however—necessary elements of population planning and control—are diverse. Recent attempts to stabilize growth, with the support of the religious elite, in countries such as Iran and Indonesia, have yielded success. Although the overall rate of growth of Muslims will continue to decline, the global Muslim population is expected to continue to grow faster than the world’s non-Muslim population in the coming decades.

Islamist political thought tends to favor a high-growth-rate model, attributing the concern over rising Muslim populations to Western attempts at limiting Muslim power. On the other hand, segments in Western societies, particularly in Europe, have exhibited concern that the high growth rate of Muslims in Europe will result in a significant shift in Europe’s ethnic and religious makeup. Evidence suggests, however, that the growth rate of Muslim populations in Europe follows the patterns of the countries of origin for the first generation but normalizes and aligns with the patterns of the host population in subsequent generations. Thus although the Muslims of Europe will continue to increase in number relative to native Europeans, extrapolations of future Muslim populations on the basis of the high birthrates of first generation Muslim immigrants do not yield accurate results.

A look at the countries of the Muslim world shows that no single political model or outlook unifies them all. There are secular democracies, Islamic republics, monarchies, and dictatorships. Over the course of the past century, Muslim majority countries have fought wars with each other, fallen into the spheres of influence of either the eastern or western blocs during the cold war, and also striven to be nonaligned. That any of these positions or alliances can be justified as “Islamic” indicates the pliability of political thought among Muslims according to pragmatic needs and immediate strategic, cultural, and historical contexts. It should be understood that political thought among Muslims is neither static nor monolithic, nor should it always be considered as normatively “Islamic.”

There is no single authority that speaks for all Muslims. The standard reference for normative Islam, however, remains the text of the Qur’an, the mass of prophetic sayings, and the legacy of the intellectual and interpretive tradition across the centuries, which is collectively reappropriated and reapplied in changing historical contexts. The platforms of the Jama‘at-i Islami in Pakistan and India, for example, differ on account of their unique contexts—one rooted in a Muslim majority country that was founded in the name of Islam, the other in a Muslim minority democratic context. Political thought among Iranians stems from Shi‘i historical and religious experiences and the interaction of these with a myriad of modern influences, including nationalism and imperialism. In contrast, Saudis draw on their Sunni Hanbali-Wahhabi background. Muslims in America reflect this contingency and diversity within the Muslim world and Islamic history. Unsurprisingly, the political thought and activism of American Muslims are increasingly in conformity with the sociology of American political culture.