Poll: Muslims united on basic tenets, differ on definition of Islam

The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are united in their belief in God and the Prophet Muhammad and are bound together by such religious practices as fasting during the holy month of Ramadan and giving alms to assist people in need.

But they have widely differing views about many other aspects of their faith, including how important religion is to their lives, who qualifies as a Muslim and what practices are acceptable in Islam, according to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The survey, which involved more than 38,000 face-to-face interviews in more than 80 languages in 39 countries and territories, found that in addition to the widespread conviction that there is only one God and that Muhammad is His Prophet, large percentages of Muslims around the world share other articles of faith, including a belief in angels, heaven, hell and fate (or predestination). While there is broad agreement on the core tenets of Islam, those surveyed differed significantly in their levels of religious commitment, openness to multiple interpretations of their faith and acceptance of various sects and movements.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, Muslims aged 35 and older tended to place greater emphasis on religion and to exhibit higher levels of religious commitment than Muslims between the ages of 18 and 34. In all seven countries surveyed in the region, older Muslims were more likely to report that they attended mosques, read the Quran daily and prayed multiple times each day. Outside the Middle East and North Africa, the generational differences were not as sharp. In one country, Russia, the general pattern was reversed and younger Muslims were significantly more observant than their elders.

Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa tended to be most keenly aware of the distinction between the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia. In most countries surveyed in the region, at least 40 percent of Sunnis did not accept Shiites as fellow Muslims. In many cases, even greater percentages did not believe that some practices common among Shiites, such as visiting the shrines of saints, were acceptable as part of Islamic tradition. Only in Lebanon and Iraq — nations where sizable populations of Sunnis and Shiites live side by side — did large majorities of Sunnis recognize Shiites as fellow Muslims and accept their distinctive practices as part of Islam.

Outside the Middle East and North Africa, the distinction between Sunni and Shia appears to be of lesser consequence. In many of the countries surveyed in Central Asia, most Muslims did not identify with either branch of Islam, saying instead that they were “just a Muslim.”

A similar pattern prevailed in southern and eastern Europe, where pluralities or majorities in all countries identified themselves as “just a Muslim.” In some of these countries, decades of communist rule may have made sectarian distinctions unfamiliar. But identification as “just a Muslim” was also prevalent in many countries without a communist legacy. In Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, 26% of Muslims described themselves as Sunnis, compared with 56% who said they were “just a Muslim” and 13% who did not give a definite response.