How many Muslims do you think there are in your country?
Research and polling company, Ipsos Mori, released their latest result of their survey “Perils of Perception”. The paper included results for the question out of 100 people how many do you think Muslim?
The results of the survey showed the gap between people's perception and reality. The vast majority of NonMuslim countries with a minority Muslim population determined the Muslim population to be larger than what they were. Countries like the USA thought their Muslim population was 17 times more populated than what it actually was. Britons believed there to be three times more Muslim s in their country whilst India believed there to be twice the number of Muslims in their country.
The increasing gap between perception and reality may be due to the media's increasing focus on the Muslim population, which may distort the number in the surveyor's mind to how many followers of the Islamic faith there actually is. The increased perception gives insight to possible fears of an encroaching Muslim population.
Interestingly, countries with a larger Muslim population such as Turkey which has a 98% Muslim population believed there to be less Muslims in their country, with Turkish people believing 81% of their population was Muslim.Similar to Indonesia who actually has an 87.2% actual population but people perceived 80% of the population to be Muslim.
The survey asked another question, in 2020, out of 100 people how many people do you believe will be Muslim? the majority of non-Muslim countries thought there would be an extreme increase in the number of Muslims in their country whilst countries with a high number of Muslims believed the number to decrease drastically.