The phrase “top Muslim countries” is ambiguous. It can mean the countries with the largest number of Muslims, the highest percentage of Muslims, or the greatest historical influence within Islam. Those measures produce different lists.
Spiritual Culture uses the most recent comprehensive country-level estimates from Pew Research Center and ranks this page only by Muslim population count in 2020. Pew’s 2025 global report draws on more than 2,700 censuses, surveys, population registers, and other demographic sources.
10 countries with the largest Muslim populations in 2020
| Rank | Country | Muslim population | Muslim share of national population |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | 238.99 million | 87.0% |
| 2 | Pakistan | 226.88 million | 96.5% |
| 3 | India | 213.06 million | 15.2% |
| 4 | Bangladesh | 151.44 million | 91.1% |
| 5 | Nigeria | 119.98 million | 56.1% |
| 6 | Egypt | 104.04 million | 95.2% |
| 7 | Iran | 87.52 million | 99.8% |
| 8 | Turkey | 83.60 million | 97.1% |
| 9 | Sudan | 46.25 million | 98.9% |
| 10 | Algeria | 43.33 million | 98.4% |
Together, these ten countries were home to about 1.3 billion Muslims, roughly 65% of the global Muslim population. India is the only country in this top ten where Muslims were not the national majority.
Why Indonesia, Pakistan, and India matter demographically
Indonesia, Pakistan, and India together contained about one-third of the world’s Muslims in 2020. This is an important corrective to the common assumption that most Muslims live in the Middle East. Pew estimates that the Asia-Pacific region contained about 59% of all Muslims in 2020, while the Middle East and North Africa contained about one-fifth.
Population size is not the same as percentage
A small country can have a Muslim population above 99% yet contain far fewer Muslims than India, where Muslims are a minority. A “most Muslim” list based on percentage would therefore look very different from the count-based ranking above.
Percentage also does not measure religious practice. Mosque attendance, fasting, legal traditions, devotional life, Sufi practice, Sunni-Shia identity, and local custom vary within countries and cannot be inferred from a demographic percentage alone.
Sunni, Shia, and other Muslim communities
The table groups Muslims together because Pew’s global dataset uses a broad Muslim category. It does not rank countries by Sunni or Shia population. Iran has a Twelver Shia majority, while most of the other countries in the table have Sunni majorities, alongside minority communities and internal schools of law, theology, spirituality, and local practice.
Why the reference year matters
These are 2020 estimates published in Pew’s 2025 global religious landscape report. National populations have changed since then through births, deaths, migration, and revised census data. The figures should therefore be cited as 2020 estimates rather than presented as a live 2026 count.
For religious beliefs, worship, law, and traditions rather than demographics, see our broader Islam coverage.
