Friday, November 12, 2010

Facts About Muslims in World


The Pew Research Center did a demographic study in October 2009 and found that there are 1.57 billion Muslims around the world. This means that about 1 in 4 people are Muslim. There are between 47-50 Muslim-majority countries that have over 50% Muslim population. I count 47. Some, such as President Obama, have counted 57 Muslim majority states. Some have already added the Palestinians as a country which will be 100% Muslim as they do not want any Jews in their state. Also, some have counted a country called Sahara, but this was taken over by Morocco in 1979, so should be counted as a part of that state. It's not listed in the CIA records of countries. Snopes tells me there are 57 Muslim states. There is one Jewish state; Israel.



Islam is the 2nd largest religion in the world. It is mainly found in the Middle East, northern Africa and some places in Asia. They also have communities in China, the Balkans and Russia.



Most of India's Muslims left and formed their own state of Pakistan which is the 2nd largest state of Muslims with a population of 172,800,000. However, India still has about 13.4% of their population as Muslims which means 160,945,000 Muslims still live there. The Muslim countries cover over 12 million square miles. Israel has only about 12,000 square miles. In fractions that is one one-thousandth of the Muslim-Arab land.



What I'm leading up to is that Israel is our only Jewish state, created in 1948. We now have about 6 million Jews living there as well as over a million Muslims. Our population is about 7.2 million people. We had to wait 2,000 years to regain a piece of land that had originally been ours. We were attacked in 70 AD by the Romans and some of us were able to continue living there until it was again declared a state in 48, but many of us had been hauled off as slaves or had been killed by the Romans. It took some pressing events such as the Dryfuss Affair to wake many of us up and decide that it was time to make the attempt to go back to our roots. That and numerous Pogroms in Russia set many thinking that we needed our own country as we just weren't welcome in the ones we had settled in. The Holocaust certainly told is it was past time to have our own state.



Surpisingly, the Ottoman Empire had invited many of us back after we had traversed to Eastern Europe from the Middle East. They found need for our skills and sent out invitations. We were treated better there than we had been in Europe, though we found we were dminnis, or 2nd class citizens.



When Israel was declared a state in 1948, the Middle Eastern Muslim communities turned against us, and many of these people left for Israel as they had no other choice at that point. So we had a migration of Jews to Israel from Muslim countries while Muslims that were living in Israel left to camp out in temporary quarters due to the directions of their leaders. Of course Israel took the displaced Middle Eastern Jews in but the Muslim countries did not take in the Palestinians. What happened was that some wound up in Jordan and they had a huge battle about it. Jordan fought it. Now many are settled there with the king marrying a very lovely American-Muslim lady.



We have about 6 million Jews living in the United States and a few scattered in other parts of the world. Israel and the USA have the bulk of the Jews in the world. We are less than 1% of the world population.



We have surprised the world by surviving all the wars since our birth in 48, surmounting horrible odds, but am yisrael chai, Israel lives. This hasn't made the Muslims very happy, to say the least. I was 14 years old when Israel was created and have seen more wars than I care to say. After the attack in 67 we gained back Jerusalem, the City of David. It had been occupied by Jordan who had taken it over illegally. Before religions other than Muslim could not enter. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated with filth and excrement. With Israel's miracle of regaining it, it has been open to all. for the first time our people could pray at the Wall. Tourists love to come to Jerusalem, whatever the religion. The Bahai Center is a lovely spot in Haifa.

Israelis believe they have the right to build in their own capital if they find they need to do this. Would they tell any state in the USA that they couldn't repair, fix, or even replace something in their capital? What Chutzpa that would be. There has been no peace treaty signed with Palestinians who want our little sliver of land for their state though they have had 62 years to think it over.

Except for a few Arabs, most of the Palestinian population had entered the Holy Land from other countries in the Middle East to gain employment from Jews returning to the land in the 1800's in what we call Aliyahs. Joan Peters aptly points this out in her book, "From Time Immemorial." What the present day Arab leadership now wants is for the right of return for their people, which would swamp Israel completely. Israel would then have millions right on their doorstep. This is why it is necessary for the Arabs to come to the table and talk peace if they mean it. They are even denying our past history in the land, which is hard to fathom.

Israel seems to have a hard time reminding people that Israel is not the 51st state of the United States. It is its own state and has its interests at heart and hopes that the USA can understand this. So many are trying to deligitimize Israel, which I feel is disgraceful. It's the only democratic state in the Middle East and has been fighting for survival only. It's never practiced ethnic cleansing . Israel itself is made up of the Jews from all the countries in the world . It has been experiencing the return of the diaspora as predicted in the Bible. There are probably more diverse people here in this little melting pot than in any other country. It's like truly living in a little United Nations.

There can come a day when the Arabs will tire of hating us and decide to live in peace, even allowing us our legitimate piece. It will come about when Europe and the United States stand firm and back us up in our determination to stay alive and to keep our teeny state whole, not to do things like boycott Israeli products.

http://www.oic-oci.org/member_states.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_majority_countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
http://www.jewishindy.com/mudules/php?name=News&file=print&sid=13491 page 5.

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