ماجده محمد محمد بيومى

                             The Muslim world

The Muslim population of the world is around 1-3 billion of whom 25% of Muslims live in the Indian subcontinent; 20% in sub-Saharan Africa; 17% in South-east Asia; 18% in the Arab world; 10% in the republics of the old Soviet Union and China; and Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan comprise 10% of the non-Arab Middle East. Although there are Muslim minorities in almost every area, including Latin America and Australia, they are most numerous in the Russian Federation, India, and Central Africa (The Islamic Affairs Department 1989). There are about 15 million Muslims living in Europe (Ramadan 1999) and about 7-8 million in the United States (Ahmed 1999). In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that there is approximately 12—15 million Muslims. It is now a generation since western Europeans began to notice that there were Muslim communities in most European cities (Nielsen 1999). Throughout the world Muslims are connected by their common Islamic faith and heritage.