Talk:Demographics of Islam
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[edit] Table Data
Since there was no discernable sort order in the previous data table here, I updated it with one sorted by country, and also created a new one, ordered by population percentage/muslim population: Demographics of Islam - Data by Percentage --Frescard 21:33, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- Maybe you should sort it by muslim population instead. It would be more intuitive. -- Abbas
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- But it is sorted by population. I swapped them a while ago, so that the one sorted by name is the external one now. --Frescard 00:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I question the accuracy of this table. I don't have alternate data at the moment but I know for a fact that Turkey, for one, is not 100% Muslim. The Wikipedia article on Turkey states that "Nominally, 99% of the population is Muslim. . . The remaining 1% of the population are of other religions, mostly Christian (Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic (Gregorian), Syriac Orthodox, Molokans, Roman Catholics and Protestants), Jewish, Bahá'ís and Yezidis."
- The Filipinos in Saudi Arabia are not "citizens of the country. As such they should not be included. Also, I think the 100% numbers have been revised down to conform to the CIA factbook and other sources. Thanks, Muhammad.
I hope that there is further information on Muslims in Russia available soon.
[edit] Why was the column on religious freedom added?
Whether or not a country respects religious freedom has no obvious relationship with the percentage of Muslims, or with the Sunni/Shi'a breakdown. It has NOTHING to do with demographics, but with politics. I suspect a veiled argument on the order of "Muslims don't respect religious freedom." While this is unfortunately TRUE of some Muslim countries, this article is not the place to make the argument. I'll wait a day or so and unless someone comes up with a darn good reason to keep the column, I'm deleting it.
I think we should also round the figures to the nearest thousand. The figures have a totally spurious precision. I should know -- I started the article. It's MY FAULT and bad science. Zora 07:19, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- Delete it and ill add it back. I think it is legitimate. Especially when in some nations people cant choose not to be muslim. Your argument is very POV. Mattrix18 06:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- The column is there to illustrate the issue whether the people being counted as Muslims have an option not to be one.
- An important point when you're trying to interpret a statistic. After all, in some countries you may get arrested if you try to convert from Islam. This naturally would have serious implication on the believability of religious statistics coming from that country. --Frescard 14:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not averse to having a para in there about the difficulty of guessing at religious affiliations, or social pressures that prevent people from saying what they REALLY think or believe. Linking to the article on apostasy in Islam (whatever it is called now) would be appropriate. There are probably other WP articles that apply to this situation. If you have a well-run national census in a secular country, presumably "religious affiliation" means "research subject checked this box" and nothing more -- it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how often he/she attends church, whether or not he/she believes all the doctrines of the church, etc. When there are no censuses, as in some of the countries, or if claiming a certain religious affiliation exposes you to persecution or death, the figures are going to be fuzzy or skewed.
The place to make these arguments is discursively, in the text, not as a kind of subliminal suggestion by inclusion of another column in the table. The column is POV. I'm not a Muslim, I'm a Buddhist, so I'm one of the people who would NOT be allowed to practice her religion in Saudi Arabia. I do not support such discrimination. However, I also want to be fair and out-front. Zora 07:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- A little disclaimer note doesn't cut it. That's like those TV ads where they scream at you about some outrageous deal you're getting, and then, once you come to the illegible fine print, you realize that you're not really getting a deal at all. It's just a legal "fig leaf", which has no real informative value.
- You have a HUGE table here that takes up a couple of screens. A brief sentence, hidden away somewhere, explaining the worthlessness of most of the data doesn't balance the weight and presence of that table.
- And, to use your argument about "implying" things via the data, couldn't one also claim that the table numbers imply how popular Islam is? After all, it's got a billion followers! How can it be wrong? Except that most of these people didn't actually "choose" Islam. They had to!
- No. I think most of the data of this table is totally useless from a neutral point of view, and we have to make that very clear, and on equal standing with the data, that the trustworthyness of these numbers is very questionable. --69.157.234.199 16:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
That's a mighty big strawperson you set up there, anonymous. I'm not making any argument that Islam has to be right because so many people believe in it. Some Muslims boast that Islam is the fastest-growing religion and assert that this means the religion is true, but I don't believe the "fastest growing" claim myself, and I remove such arguments where I find them.
Also, claiming that the data is "useless" is silly. If this data is useless, so is all data re religious adherence. I agree that some people are probably classified as Muslim who are atheists, or agnostics, or perhaps even secret Christians, who keep their mouths shut about their real beliefs. But do you really think that those people are more than a minority, even a tiny minority, in any country? For every college student in Iran who is a secret agnostic, there are twenty villagers who accept popular Shi'a beliefs fully and completely. The figures are fuzzy, but they aren't completely unbelievable.
I'm going to delete that column, add a para about the difficulty of enumerating adherents and a link to the apostasy page (not immediately, because I have a life, but soon). If we end up in an edit war, we'll have to invite the wider WP community to come have a look. Zora 21:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I removed the table. There is no sufficient reason for it to be here. I don't see anything comparable on any other demographics page for other religions. I am a muslim and I admit that they have problems but it is hypocritical in the extreme to have this table and nothing similar for other religions.Hokiefan 15:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Statistics are not correct
The demographic statistics in muslim countries are not as reliable as in USA. I'm from Turkey and I know for sure that muslim ratio is less than 99%. There are two reasons which must be taken into account. First, when a baby is born muslims are assuming that baby is muslim and registering him/her as muslim, changing the religion on paper is a difficult process so nobody cares. Second, since there're no reliable demographics muslims tend to increase the ratio. In my opinion at least it must be written that these numbers may not reflect reality.
- I think as his/her. According to some statics Muslims make up %92 to %95 of total population, others are %1 Christians and %4 to %5 Atheists. Turkey should be updated. Zaparojdik 17:24 24 March 2007
[edit] Mistake: The figure for Israel and the OPT only includes Israeli citizens
It is stated that 16% of the population of Israel is Muslim, which sounds right for those with Israeli citizenship, but there are roughly 3 million more Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who do not have Israeli citizenship and would not be included in this figure. Palestinians are about 96% Sunni Muslim, 4% Christian. This would make the percentage of Muslims in Israel and the OPTs combined more like 40-45%. I would suggest adding a row for the OPTs and looking up the exact population and Christian/Muslim split. (I think there was a census in 2002).
I would've editeded myself, but it's your article.
[edit] U.A.E. ??
How can the U.A.E. not be on this list? Kingturtle 20:20, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
The UAE is on the list, somewhere down the middle. I've lived in Dubai, UAE for 15 years, and I think the 85/15 split for Sunni/Shia is about right, although in Dubai, it could be higher due to immigration from Iran and Pakistan in the 60s-70s. Cheers, Raza
[edit] Extrapolations, messy datasets
After I copyedited the section on extrapolating the 2005 total for India's Muslims, I started to think that allowing "estimates" and "extrapolations" based on past trends might be a bad idea. The future is not always like the past. Of course, if we allow ONLY census figures as of the date of the census, then the figures won't be comparable, as countries don't always perform censuses on the same schedule. Is there a statistician in the house? We could really use someone with experience working with messy datasets here. Zora 00:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
