The countries with the 10 largest Christian populations and the 10 largest Muslim populations
“Top 10” lists can often be helpful in
displaying and illuminating data. For example, the two tables of countries with
the largest Christian and Muslim populations featured here reveal differences
in the concentration, diversity and projected changes in the world’s two
largest religions.
The two lists show that the
global Muslim population is more heavily concentrated in Islam’s main
population centers than the global Christian population is for Christianity,
which is more widely dispersed around the world. Indeed, about two-thirds (65%)
of the world’s Muslims live in the countries with the 10 largest Muslim
populations, while only 48% of the world’s Christians live in the countries
with the 10 largest Christian populations.
To put it another way, more than half (52%) of the world’s
Christians live in countries other than those
with the 10 largest Christian populations, while this is true for just over a
third (35%) of the world’s Muslims. In absolute terms, there are twice as many
Christians (1.2 billion) as there are Muslims (609 million) living in countries
that are not on their religion’s top 10 list.
A number of the countries with the
world’s 10 largest Muslim or Christian populations also have large (and in some
cases, larger) populations of other faith groups. In India, which has the
second-largest Muslim population, Islam is a minority religion (making up 15%
of the country’s population) and Hinduism is the majority faith. Nigeria, which
has the sixth-largest Christian population in the world (87 million), also has
the world’s fifth-largest Muslim population (90 million).
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