The Arab world covers about 5 million square miles (13 million square kilometers) and extends over three main regions, the Arabian Peninsula, northern Africa and part of an area called the Fertile Crescent, which includes Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
Approximately 200 million Arabs live in the Arab world which, politically, includes 18 countries ? Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
The majority of the people in these countries are Arabs and their governments regard themselves as Arab. Two other countries?Djibouti and Somalia?have only small Arab populations but are sometimes included in this political definition because they belong to the organization of Arab states called the Arab League.
About 90 percent of Arabs are Muslims, while only about 15 percent of Muslims are Arabs. There are over 1.1 billion Muslims in the world. The majority of Arabs belonging to the Sunni branch of Islam, the minority to the Shi’a branch.
Although Islam was born in Arabia, more than half the world’s Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia. The countries with the largest Muslim populations are Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
The Middle East is home to about a quarter of the world’s Muslims. The majority of the population in Albania and nearly half the population in Bosnia-Herzegovina are Muslim. Nearly six million Muslims live in the United States, and today Muslims live in every country on the globe.
We have set aside the pages in this feature to more closely assess who and what Arabs and Muslims believe, the origins of their beliefs and something of what those beliefs are.
And, of course, we will be posting material here regarding the Palestinian Arabs specifically and their violence-driven efforts to establish yet another Arab state on the land God has given to the Jews.
