Qur'an[change | change source]
The Qur'an is the holy book of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur'an is the sayings of God.
Islam teaches that God told Muhammad exactly what to write in the Qur'an, with the help of an angel called Jibreel. The Qur'an teaches Muslims to follow the right path by only doing good to please God. Muslims believe Allah alone decides who goes to Jannah (Heaven), and that doing good in this lifetime will bring them closer to God.
The Qur'an has a total of 114 chapters. In each chapter, there are many verses. Many Muslims try to memorize the entire Qur'an. A Muslim who does this is called a Hafiz or Hafez.
Other important books in Islam are the Sunnah (which tell about Mohammad's life) and the Hadith (which are collections of things that Muslims believe Mohammad said).
Islam in the world[change | change source]
In 2009, a study was done in 232 countries and territories.[3] This study found that 23% of the global population or 1.57 billion people are Muslims. Of those, between 75% and 90% are Sunni[4][5] and between ten and twenty five percent are Shi'a.[3][4][6] A small part belong to other Islamic sects. In about fifty countries, more than half of the people are Muslim.[7]Arabs account for around twenty percent of all Muslims worldwide. Islam has three holy sites; Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina.
Most Muslims live in Asia and Africa.[8] Around 62% of the world's Muslims live in Asia, with over 683 million followers in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.[9][10] In the Middle East, non-Arab countries such as Turkey and Iran are the largest Muslim-majority countries; in Africa, Egypt and Nigeria have the biggest Muslim communities.[11]
Most estimates indicate that the People's Republic of China has about 20 to 30 million Muslims (1.5% to 2% of the population).[12][13][14][15] However, data provided by the San Diego State University's International Population Center to U.S. News & World Report suggests that China has 65.3 million Muslims.[16] Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity in many European countries,[17] and is slowly catching up to that status in the Americas.
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