A New Census of the Moslem World

A CENSUS of the number of Mohammedans in the world is desirable because the discrepancies in the different statistical surveys attempted by various authorities and hitherto published are as disconcerting as they are surprising. Most of the estimates, it is true, have been made by Western writers, but they have often repeated figures given by Moslems, or, in some case, by pro-Islamic orators who exaggerate totals. During the negotiations of the Peace Treaty of Sevres, for example, an Indian Mohammedan wrote an appeal on behalf of the 400,000,000 Moslems of the world! In the Revue du Monde Musulman, Vol. 4, pp. 770-798, there is a long review of a book Siyahat ul Kubra-The Great Travels-by Suleiman Chukri Bey, printed at St. Petersburg in 1907, in which this Moslem globe-trotter gives the total Moslem population of the world as 360,766,695 of which 10,719,658 are in Europe, 218,789,957 in Asia, 98,952,000 in Africa and 32,305,000 in the islands of the Indian Ocean! El Moayyad, a Cairo newspaper, dated 9th November 1909, gave the total population of the Moslem world as 270,000,000, but of these 40,000,000 were said to live in China, where we know there are less than 12,000,000. In another case to which the late Rev. H. H. Jessop, D. D., called attention, the Sublime Porte under the ZHlamidian Regime carefully copied a survey of the Moslem world published in the Missionary Review of the World in 1898, and gave it as an accurate census taken under the supervision of the Sultan and at his expense! His letter on the subject dated Beirut, October 15, 1900, reads: I once translated your statistical summary of the number of Moslems in the world, 196,000,000, and showed it to the Mudir al Maarif. He took it and afterwards replied that it could not be published, as the Emperor William in Damascus had spoken publicly of the Moslems as 300,000,000! I told him the Emperor was simply quoting the exaggerated statement of a Moslem Sheikh at the dinner table, but the Mudir kept it and sent it to Constantinople and now it has come out as the official census made by the Sultan's Government and published by the Turk! The following table gives other more careful estimates from

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  Firoozeh Kashani‐Sabet•Sociology of Islam•2020

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