Many people surprisingly don’t know which countries have the largest Muslim populations in the world. Many may think it’s the Middle East, but in reality, the world’s largest-scale Muslim communities are concentrated in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Looking at the latest data, Indonesia ranks first by a wide margin. It has more than 242 million Muslims, far more than any other country. Next is Pakistan with 235 million, followed by India with 213 million. Just these three countries alone account for nearly one-third of the world’s Muslim population.

After that come Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Egypt, but what’s interesting is that when you look at the top 20 countries with the largest Muslim populations, you find that Asia and Africa actually have far larger communities than the Middle East.

While major Middle Eastern countries like Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia also have many Muslims, compared with the scale of Indonesia and Pakistan, they’re actually only a part of the bigger picture.

When you look at statistics like this, it becomes clear that the global religious distribution is more complicated than people think, and that there are regional imbalances. I think understanding the distribution of countries with large Muslim populations is also quite an important perspective for understanding the world’s politics and economics.