Islam’s origins may lie in Iraq, but the center of Muslim population, if not its culture, has now migrated elsewhere. Pakistan and India have two of the world’s largest populations, as do Indonesia and Bangladesh. Egypt, the largest middle-eastern country in terms of Islamic populations, ranks only fifth behind both of them. Russia is 10% Muslim, a bigger population by numbers than Libya and Jordan combined. Just as importantly as Islam’s now global reach is its proportion: 23.1%, nearly one in every four people.

On this day, October 8, the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life issued the startling statistics as result of their study which took three years and spanned 232 countries and territories.

With Asia, rather than the Middle East, accounting for two-thirds of the world’s Muslim population, the preconceptions of Islam being just a regional faith were shattered. As an Islam expert interviewed by the British Guardian newspaper noted, “The sheer scale of the world’s Muslim population and its spread should encourage people to ask more questions about why so many people are Muslims and what they really believe.”