Sunnis regard the first four caliphs as legitimate successors of Muhammad. The majority of the Muslims of Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank, and Saudi Arabia are Sunnis.
The largest Muslim population in a country is in Indonesia, a country home to 12.7% of the world's Muslims, followed by Pakistan (11.1%), India (10.9%) and Bangladesh (9.2%). About 20% of Muslims live in the Arab world.
Shias comprise a majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, and a plurality in Lebanon, while Sunnis make up the majority of more than forty countries from Morocco to Indonesia.
Approximately 11 percent of the population are citizens, of whom more than 85 percent are Sunni Muslims, according to media reports. The vast majority of the remainder are Shia Muslims, who are concentrated in the Emirates of Dubai and Sharjah.
Islam is practiced by 90% of Egyptians. Most Egyptian Muslims are Sunni and follow the Maliki school of jurisprudence, though all legal schools are represented. Shi'a Muslims make up a small minority.
Most Muslims in Turkey are Sunni Muslims forming about 90%, and Shia-Aleviler (Alevis, Ja'faris and Alawites) denominations in total form up to 10% of the Muslim population. Precise numbers are unavailable since Turkey doesn't conduct censuses about religious denominations.
The vast majority of China's Muslims are Sunni Muslims, although a small minority are Shia.
However, Statistics Lebanon, an independent polling and research firm, estimates that 69.3 percent of the citizen population is Muslim (31.2 percent Sunni, 32 percent Shia, and 6.1 percent Alawites and Ismailis combined).
Afghanistan is an Islamic state, in which most citizens follow Islam. As much as 90% of the population follows Sunni Islam. According to The World Factbook, Sunni Muslims constitute between 84.7 and 89.7% of the population, and Shia Muslims between 10 and 15%. Other religions are followed by 0.3% of the population.
Qatar is an Islamic state with multi-religious minorities like most of the Persian Gulf countries with waves of migration over the last 30 years. The official state religion is Sunni Islam. The community is made up of Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and small groups of Buddhists and Baha'is.
Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims share the same faith and abide by the same five pillars of Islam (Professor 7 Oct. 2003). There are no rules forcing a woman to adopt her husband's particular branch of Islam (ibid.).
The annual rates of growth for the world's Sunni and Shia populations were identical from 1990 to 2000. But the rate of growth of the Shia population is expected to be slightly lower than the rate of growth for Sunnis over the next 20 years.
The majority of India's Muslims are Sunni, with Shia making up 13% of the Muslim population.
Sunni and Shi'a Islam are the two major Islamic sects practised in Pakistan. Pakistan is a Sunni majority country, with 76% of Pakistanis identifying as Sunni and 10-15% estimated to be Shi'ites. Both variations of Islam have many different religious schools that Pakistanis adhere to.
The divide originated with a dispute over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad as leader of the Islamic faith he introduced. Today, about 85 percent of the approximately 1.6 billion Muslims around the world are Sunni, while 15 percent are Shia, according to an estimate by the Council on Foreign Relations.
The majority are Sunni (85-90%) while Shias make up between 10% and 15%. However, the Hanbali school is gaining popularity recently due to Wahhabi influence from the Middle East. Smaller minority Muslim populations in Pakistan include Quranists, nondenominational Muslims.
The Saudi government does not conduct a census on religion or ethnicity, but some sources estimate the Shiite population in Saudi Arabia to make up around 10–15% of the approximately 23 million natives of Saudi Arabia.
The majority of Iraq's Muslims are Shia, and the Isis militants gaining ground there are Sunni. According to the Pew Research Center, Iraq is one of only a handful of countries with a Shia majority. So how do opinions of Islam in Iraq compare to other countries in the region?
Almost all of the people of Pakistan are Muslims or at least follow Islamic traditions, and Islamic ideals and practices suffuse virtually all parts of Pakistani life. Most Pakistanis belong to the Sunni sect, the major branch of Islam.
The Safavid conversion of Iran to Shia Islam was a process of forced conversion that took place roughly over the 16th through 18th centuries and turned Iran (Persia), which previously had a Sunni majority population, into the spiritual bastion of Shia Islam.
Demographics. In 2010, based on the contested 2006 Census data, estimated that 94.9% of Egyptians are Muslims, 5.1% are Christians, and less than 1% are Jewish, Buddhists, or other religions.
The majority of Muslims in Israel are Sunni Arabs, with an Ahmadiyya minority. The Bedouin in Israel are also Arab Muslims, with some Bedouin clans participating in the Israeli army. The small Circassian community is composed of Sunni Muslims uprooted from the North Caucasus in the late 19th century.
Most experts and media sources estimate approximately 90 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim and 10 percent is Christian. Scholars and NGOs estimate Shia Muslims comprise approximately 1 percent of the population. There are also small numbers of Dawoodi Bohra Muslims and Ahmadi Muslims.
The official form of Islam is Sunni of the Hanbali school, in its Salafi version. According to official statistics 85-90% of Saudi Arabian citizens are Sunni Muslims, 10-12% are Shia. More than 30% of the population is made up of foreign workers who are predominantly but not entirely Muslim.
According to CIA World Factbook, 87% of Syrians are Muslim, the majority being Sunni Muslims (74%). A further 13% are Shi'a Muslims, following the Alawite (11%), Ismaili (1%) or Twelver Imami (0.5%) sects.