Interesting fact: when people talk about Islam, most imagine the Middle East, but in reality, it's quite different. The main Muslim countries are located in other regions — in South and Southeast Asia. It’s simply astonishing when you see the numbers.

Take Indonesia — there are 242 million Muslims living there, more than all Arab countries combined. Then Pakistan with 235 million, India with 213 million Muslims, even though they are a minority there. Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt — all are among the top countries by Muslim population.

If you look more closely at the list of Muslim countries, an interesting distribution becomes apparent. Yes, there are traditional centers like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, but they are not even in the top in terms of absolute numbers. Indonesia alone has more believers than Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey combined.

Egypt with its 104 million is a huge population, Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan — all are serious demographic centers. Even in China, about 25 million Muslims live, although that’s only 1.4% of the country’s population.

Data from Pew Research Center shows that Muslim countries are spread much wider than it seems at first glance. Tanzania, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Niger, Somalia — all have significant Muslim populations. It’s important to understand this for the overall picture of the world, when it comes to religious demographics and Islam’s influence on global processes. It’s just amazing how little people know about this distribution.