Ahmadiyya Muslim Community - Demographics

Demographics

According to estimates the total population of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community worldwide is over 10 million, of whom 8,202,000 live in south asia (2002e).

Further estimations put 4,910,000 in Pakistan, 1 million adherents in India, 200,000 in Indonesia, 100,000 in Bangladesh.

The Ahmadi population among the western nations is relatively humble. There are 30,000 in Britain, 30,000 in Germany, 25,000 in Canada and about 15,000 in the United States.

There are also a considerable number of Ahmadis from sub-Saharan Africa. In the year 1957, there were 100,000 Ahmadis from the African Republic of Ghana. As of 1994, there were 150,000 converts to the Ahmadiyya Community from French-speaking countries. Pew Research Center reports that among the Muslims, the country with the largest proportion of Ahmadis is Ghana (16%) followed by 15% in Tanzania, 12% in Cameroon and 10% in Libera. Among the surveyed countries smallest proportions are found in Senegal (1%), 2% each in Mali and Guinea Bissau, 3% in Nigeria and 4% each in Uganda, Chad and Kenya. Pew also reports 6% each in DR Congo and Niger. This ranges from a few thousand in DR Congo where the Muslim population is as little as 1.5%, to almost 2.5 million in Nigeria, the country with the highest Muslim population. Were these results extrapolated to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, the Ahmadi adherents would by far exceed 10 million, potentially reaching in the low tens of millions worldwide.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is established in over 200 countries of the world in all six continents and is the only community to have translated the Qur’an into over 118 languages. These include translations in German, Spanish, Swahili, French, Russian, Norwegian, Italian, Dutch, Gurmukhi, Persian, Pashto, Japanese, Tamil, Chinese and even Yiddish. The most famous translations of the Qur’an done by an Ahmadi author are the Tafseer-e-Sagheer and Tafseer-e-Kabeer, which are Urdu translations of the Qur’an with commentary by the Second Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Community, Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad. Tafseer-e-Sagheer is the smaller commentary while Tafseer-e-Kabeer is the larger ten-volume commentary; an English rendering of the Tafseer-e-Kabeer consists of five volumes. The first author of an English translation of the Qur’an was an Ahmadi (though not a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, belonging to the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement), Maulana Muhammad Ali. In the year 1980, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community living in the city of Calgary, in Canada, distributed copies of the Qur’an to Inuit communities in the Arctic Circle near the North Pole.