You know, most people think that Islam is primarily related to the Middle East. But if you look at the real numbers, the picture is quite different. The largest Muslim country in the world is not even where you probably expect it to be.

Indonesia is simply a monster in terms of Muslim population. 242 million people, which is 87% of the population. That’s more than any other country on the planet. For comparison: Pakistan with its 235 million (96%) is second, followed by India with 213 million, although Muslims make up only 15% of the total.

In general, if you look at the top largest Muslim communities, South and Southeast Asia simply dominate. Bangladesh (150M), Nigeria (627M), Egypt (104M) — now that’s impressive. Even Iran, which seems to be the center of the Islamic world, has 88 million with nearly complete coverage of the population.

If you add up only Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, you get approximately 627 million Muslims. That’s more than the entire population of Europe. Wild statistics, when you think about it.

Turkey (84M), Sudan (235M), Algeria (242M), Iraq (213M), Afghanistan (39M) — all significant players, but even combined, they don’t reach Indonesia. Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Syria, Niger, Somalia complement the picture.

In conclusion: the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia, and this is a fact that is often overlooked. The data source is Pew Research Center (2025) and Visual Capitalist. Interestingly, global demographics often do not match our perceptions of the world.