The Global Religious Landscape June 2012 | Page 12

11
GLOBAL RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE

A plurality of Jews (
) live in North America, while about four-in-ten (
Middle East and North Africa – almost all of them in Israel.

) live in the

Living as Majorities and Minorities
Nearly three-quarters (
)
of the world’s people live
in countries in which their
religious group makes up a
majority of the population.
Only about a quarter (
)
of all people live as religious
minorities. (This gure does
not include subgroups of the
eight major groups in this
study, such as Shia Muslims
living in Sunni-majority
countries or Catholics living
in Protestant-majority
countries.)

Majority or Minority
Percentage of each religious group that lives in countries where its
adherents are a majority or a minority
LIVING AS MINORITY

LIVING AS MAJORITY

97%

Hindus
Christians

3%
13

87

Muslims

73

27

Unaffiliated

71

29
59

41

Jews
Buddhists
Folk Religionists*

72

28
<1

>99

100
0
Other religions**
Overwhelmingly, indus
and Christians tend to live
*Includes followers of African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native
American religions and Australian aboriginal religions.
in countries where they are
**Includes Bahai’s, Jains, Sikhs, Shintoists, Taoists, followers of Tenrikyo, Wiccans,
in the majority. Fully
Zoroastrians and many other faiths.
Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.
of all indus live in the
world’s three indu-majority
countries (India, Mauritius
and Nepal), and nearly nine-in-ten Christians (
) are found in the world’s
Christianmajority countries. (To see the religious composition of each country, see the table on page .)

Though by smaller margins, most Muslims (
) and religiously unaf liated people (
) also
live in countries in which they are the predominant religious group. Muslims are a majority in
countries, including of the
countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The religiously
unaf liated make up a majority of the population in six countries, of which China is by far the
largest. (The others are the Czech Republic, Estonia, ong Kong, Japan and North Korea.)
Most members of the other major religious groups live in countries in which they are in the
minority. Seven-in-ten uddhists (
), for example, live as religious minorities. Just three-

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY