Muslim
Majority
Cultures

From the time when the Messenger's community were surrounded by hostile lands,

the world was seen as Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb,

the land of peace and the land of war,

one within the protection of the group,

and one being terrain in which you are continuously under threat of violence

simply for your belief in One God.

But with the submission of the Makkan tribes things changed,

and then with the rapid expansion of borders,

the lines became much less clear cut.

But there are places in the world

that would consider themselves to be Dar al-Islam,

places where almost the entire population is muslim,

though not always of the same sort.

And many of these places lie on what used to be known as the Islamic Crescent,

lands that spread out from that small town in the Arabian desert

across Africa to the Atlantic Ocean,

and through Asia to the border of China.

To the north it spreads through Iraq,

and Palestine and Syria, into Turkey.

To the west, across Egypt it spreads along the Mediterranean coast,

through Libya, and Tunisia, and Algeria and Morocco

south of the Sahara from the Sudan through Chad, Niger and Mali,

Mauritania, Senegal and Western Sahara.

There are many more Arabic speakers in North Africa

than there are in the Arabian peninsula.

To the North East, Islam spread across Iran,

up into southern Russia through Azerbaijan,

and through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgistan,

all just to the north of Afghanistan.

All these countries are overwhelmingly muslim today,

and of course, the Mughal empire carried Islam into Pakistan

and across North India into Bangladesh.

But here we have a situation to remember

when we are considering who are the muslims of the world,

and what we mean by muslim countries,

in as much as a country with muslims a small 14% minority, such as India,

can still have 200 million muslims,

almost as many as Pakistan

and many millions more than Bangladesh.

And five times as many as Afghanistan.

But then, only 3% of China is muslim,

but that still comes to 50 million.

Yet below China, just north of Australia,

at the eastern edge of the muslim world

lie the tropical islands of Indonesia,

the country with the world's biggest muslim population,

230 million.

And just over the water there is Malaysia,

where muslims are in a 60% majority,

but only 20 million,

whereas in Nigeria muslims are only just over half of the population

but that still comes to 100 million.

The world of Islam is widely varied,

and the location of the line between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb

is not always so easy to define.

All these places have felt the sweep of armies back and forth

over the centuries that they have been muslim,

so populations have seen first hand

the effect of political power on the perception of the nature of Islam.

But if majority countries are to be seen as

models of Islamic governance,

then it should be clear

that there is no corruption and hypocrisy to be seen there,

and as long as religion is allied to earthly power,

that seems an unlikely eventuality.