(CNSNews.com) – A comprehensive new survey of the world’s Muslim population finds that nearly one in four people on the planet is an adherent of Islam, but the number of Muslims it gives for the United States is significantly smaller than those routinely cited by Islamic organizations – and used by President Obama in his Cairo speech last June.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says its latest report contains “the most up-to-date and fully sourced estimates of the size and distribution of the worldwide Muslim population.”

Its lead finding is that there are 1.57 billion Muslims living in the world today, or about 23 percent of the estimated 6.8 billion world population. Of those, about 60 percent are in Asia and 20 percent in the Middle East and North Africa. The Sunni-Shia ratio comes down at roughly 9:1.

Twenty percent of Muslims live in countries where Islam is not the majority faith, with large minorities in India, China and Russia.

More than 38 million Muslims live in Europe – about five percent of the total population – including more than four million in Germany and 3.5 million in France. At 5.7 percent, the European Union country with the biggest proportion of Muslims is the Netherlands, home to the outspoken anti-Islamist lawmaker, Geert Wilders.

The 1.57 billion world Muslim population figure is larger than the frequently used one of 1.3 billion, and even a little bigger than the 1.5 billion usually cited by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

When it comes to the U.S., however, the Pew survey offers a figure significantly smaller than those favored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other organizations. Pew says there are 2.454 million Muslims in the U.S., about 0.8 percent of the country’s total population.
 
The U.S. Census Bureau does not collect religious data.

Last year, the American Religious Identification Survey conducted by scholars at Trinity College found the number of American adults self-identifying as Muslims to be 1.3 million, up from 1,1 million in 2001.

But also in 2008, by contrast, a Newsweek article previewing Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the U.S. made reference to “the nation’s eight million Muslims.”

The Islamic Society of North America states in its press releases that there are “more than seven million Muslims in the United States,” while CAIR releases have also included the assertion that “there are an estimated seven million Muslims in the United States.”

In his “address to the Muslim world” in Cairo in June, Obama made reference to “nearly seven million American Muslims in our country.”

One Muslim leader watching the speech on television at a media event at CAIR’s Washington office was Ibrahim Ramey of the Muslim American Society (MAS).

In his response to the address afterwards Ramey noted approvingly that Obama had “mentioned, quite accurately, a number of important contributions that Muslims have made, and continue to make, for the advancement of American civil society, including that the fact that the Muslim American community numbers in excess of seven million.”

A statement issued by MAS on the day of the speech went further, describing the U.S. Muslim community as “in excess of eight million strong.”

Writing about Obama’s speech, Islam specialist Daniel Pipes said that “Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America relentlessly promote the notion of seven or even ten million American Muslims.”

“Obama’s accepting their version amounts to a giveaway, a cheap way to win the approbation of Islamists who so widely influence Muslim opinion,” he said.

Pipes has argued that by presenting a bigger number, Islamic groups get “enhanced access and clout.”

‘6-7 million seems reasonable’

In its new survey, Pew says it determined Muslim populations in the more than 200 countries and territories covered by examining demographic studies, population surveys and census data.

As a source for the U.S. figure of 2.4 million it cites a two year-old Pew Research Center study on American Muslims which discusses the issue of the population size issue in some detail.

That March 2007 study – which offered a figure of 2.35 million at the time – said it represented “perhaps the most rigorous effort to date to scientifically estimate the size of the Muslim American population” – immigrants, native-born and converts – but added that the results should be interpreted carefully.

“As with the estimates that preceded it, the Pew forecast is an approximation, subject to the limitations of the methodology used to derive it,” it said. It noted in particular the difficulty in getting data on American-born converts to Islam.

Pew acknowledged in the 2007 report that its figure was significantly lower than “some commonly reported estimates of the Muslim population, including several frequently cited by Muslim American groups.”

It linked the frequently cited estimate of six to seven million Muslims to a 2001 survey – sponsored by CAIR – which questioned leaders from a representative sample of mosques, and concluded that two million Muslims were associated with a mosque (“Association” was defined as at least attending Eid, the major Islamic holiday at the end of Ramadan).

Based on that number, the survey authors surmised that “estimates of a total Muslim
population of 6-7 million in America seem reasonable.”