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The two main traditions within Islam are Sunni and Shi’a. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, leadership of the Muslim community passed to a succession of caliphs (‘deputies’). In the mid-7th century under the caliphate of Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law, some came to believe that leadership of the Muslim community should be hereditary; these became known as the Shi’a (partisans of Ali). The majority held that the caliphs should be democratically chosen, according to the Sunna, the sayings and customs of the Prophet Muhammad. These are known as Sunni. They number more than 1.1 billion, and are in the majority in most Islamic countries. The Shi’a number 192 million and are in the majority in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Yemen. Within Sunni and Shi’a there are various schools of law and traditions. The Sunni schools of law are widespread, such as the Maliki school that is dominant throughout most of Muslim Africa. In Shi’a Islam there are more localized traditions, such as the Alawite and Druze in Syria and Lebanon. The Ibadiyyah tradition originated in the decades immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, before the split between Sunni and Shi’a. Small numbers of Ibadites, who are predominantly Bedouin Arabs, are found in the deserts of Arabia, Iraq and North Africa.
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Islam
There are 1.34 billion Muslims worldwide, 20% of the world’s population. Islam is the state religion of 25 countries.
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Hinduism is intricately woven into the land and culture of India, and Hindus refer to their religion as sanatana dharma, the eternal truth or ancient religion. Although 95 percent of the world’s Hindus still live in India, there was a significant wave of migration from the 1st to 7th centuries CE along trade routes into South-East Asia and Indonesia. The second major phase began when Indians migrated to other parts of the British Empire as indented labour or for trade. Many Hindu gurus travelled west from the late 19th century, and the spread of Hindu ideas has been considerable through Europe, North America and Australasia. In the USA, Swami Vivekananda spoke at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893 in Chicago, and in 1894 established the Vedanta Society of New York. The Vendanta Society is also credited with establishing the first Hindu temple in the USA – in San Francisco in 1906. Since the 1960s, a wave of movements inspired by Hindu philosophy and spirituality has emerged as westerners have been influenced by the teachings of visiting gurus, travels to India and translations of classics such as the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads. Movements such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) now have communities worldwide.
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Hinduism
Hinduism is the world’s third largest religion, with over 950 million Hindus worldwide. Almost all live in South Asia, with the majority in India, where over 80% of people are Hindu.
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Buddhists make up nearly 6 percent of the world’s population. More than 98 percent live in South-East Asia, where new political freedoms in many countries have witnessed a growth of Buddhist practice and monasticism, particularly since the 1990s. In Cambodia, for example, only 3,000 monks were thought to have survived the civil war and its ensuing genocide. By 2006 the number of monks and pagodas had returned to pre-war levels of 1969–70. However, Buddhist activities are monitored or restricted in other countries, such as North Korea, China and Burma. Outside Asia, there has been a considerable growth in Buddhism, with more than 3 million Buddhists in the USA, over 1.5 million in Europe and almost 700,000 in Latin America. Within the three major traditions or branches of Buddhism there are hundreds of smaller organizations and groups, including the English Sangha Trust, with 10,000 supporters; the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, with 800,000 members, and Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, with 19.5 million members.
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Buddhism
More than half the world’s population live in countries where Buddhism is now, or has been, dominant. During the 20th century, Buddhism was subject to greater suppression than at any time in its history.
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Since the 1980s, Jewish population trends have been affected by major socioeconomic and geopolitical changes: the break-up of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the reunification of Germany, the expansion of the European Union, instability in some Latin American countries and continuing tensions in the Middle East. As a result, 80 percent of the world’s Jews now live in the USA and Israel. The ‘core’ Jewish populations illustrated on this map include those who, when asked, identified themselves as Jews, or were identified by someone in the same household as Jews. This definition reflects subjective feelings and overlaps, but does not always coincide with, definitions of rabbinic law – Halakah. Jewish population studies also recognize the ‘enlarged’ Jewish population: this includes the ‘core’ population, all others of Jewish parentage who are not currently Jewish, and the non-Jewish members of their households. In the state of Israel, however, individual status is subject to Ministry of Interior rulings that follow criteria established by rabbinical authorities. The ‘core’ Jewish population in Israel is not based on personal subjective identification but reflects the legal rules of Halakah.
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Judaism
There are over 13 million Jews worldwide, more than 5 million of whom live in Israel.
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The Sikh faith began in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century under the teachings of Guru Nanak. The Punjab remains the heartland of the Sikh religion, with up to 16 million Sikhs living in this state. The largest Sikh populations outside India are in the USA, UK and Canada, and were originally established through links with British rule in India during the British Empire. Canada’s first gurdwara opened in 1908 in Vancouver, the UK’s in London in 1911, and the USA’s in 1912 in California. The 2001 British Census asked the population to voluntarily state their religion and 336,179 Sikhs in the UK were recorded. The Canadian Census of the same year asked for religious affiliation and recorded 278,400 Sikhs. In contrast, the US Bureau of Census is prohibited by law from asking this question. However, an independent Religions Congregations Membership Study (RCMS) is planning a major survey of religious populations in 2010 that will include a county-by-county statistic of the Sikh population in the USA.
