As findings show, substantial portions of Western respondents in the survey perceived a clash between Islam and the values of society in their country.

This included nearly half of respondents in France (46%) and Germany (47%), and a plurality in the United States (36%) and Britain (38%) who chose this statement. Notably smaller portions chose the alternative statement – that Islam is generally compatible with the values of society in their country – including 22% in France, 20% in Germany, 17% in the United States and 24% in Britain.

In a separate survey experiment for the purpose of comparison, only 14% of US respondents perceived such a clash with Buddhism, with similar or matching results for Sikhism (15%) and Hinduism (14%). Likewise, only 6% of British respondents perceived a values clash with Buddhism, while just 8% said the same for both Sikhism and Hinduism.

In other results, general impressions of Islam were comparatively less favorable than that of other world religions among significant numbers of Western respondents.

For instance, all four Western samples had a discernibly higher number of respondents who felt unfavorable to Islam, compared with other religions.

Source: YouGov

As of 2010, there were an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, making Islam the world’s second-largest religious tradition after Christianity. And although many people, especially in the United States, may associate Islam with countries in the Middle East or North Africa, nearly two-thirds (62%) of Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the Pew Research Center analysis. In fact, more Muslims live in India and Pakistan (344 million combined) than in the entire Middle East-North Africa region (317 million).

However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest concentration of Muslims of any region of the world: 93% of its approximately 341 million inhabitants are Muslim, compared with 30% in sub-Saharan Africa and 24% in the Asia-Pacific region.  Muslims make up a majority of the population in 49 countries around the world. The country with the largest number (about 209 million) is Indonesia, where 87.2% of the population identifies as Muslim. India has the world’s second-largest Muslim population in raw numbers (roughly 176 million), though Muslims make up just 14.4% of India’s total population.

Pew Research Center uses an array of surveys, census reports, population registers and other data sources to estimate numbers of Muslims and other religious groups around the world, the goal being to count all groups and people who self-identify with a particular religion. The figures presented here are as of 2010.

Looking ahead, the Center estimates that by 2050 the number of Muslims worldwide will grow to 2.76 billion, or 29.7% of world’s population. The share of the world’s Muslims who live in sub-Saharan Africa will increase from 15.5% in 2010 to 24.3%. Asia, which is currently home to more of the world’s Muslims (61.7%) than all the other regions combined, will continue to host a majority of the world’s Muslims, albeit with a smaller share (52.8%). As for the Middle East and North Africa, the region will roughly maintain its share of the world’s Muslims, rising only slightly from 19.8% to 20.0% in 2050. Just 0.2% of the world’s Muslims live in North America. In the U.S., Muslims are projected to double from 0.9% of the population in 2010 to 2.1% by 2050 based on recent demographic and migration patterns.

Source: Pew Research Center