The Muslim world contains parts of West Africa and North-Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the Arabian gulf, the Caucasus and regions in South and Southeast- Asia. Every fourth of the 6 billion people living on Earth is a Muslim – which makes approximately 1,5 billion believing Muslims. Most of them – 200 millions – live in Indonesia, India follows with 150 to 170 millions, it is in fact the second biggest Muslim country in the world. Populations in Iran, Turkey and Egypt vary between 60 and 80 millions. Saudi Arabia has a Muslim population of more than 20 millions.

Apart from the countries where Muslims are the majority, there are many countries with a Muslim minority population, like Europe, where the combined number of all Muslims amounts to ca. 80 millions. Most of them live in Western Europe and Russia. The biggest Muslim minority can be found in France with almost 5 million Muslims, the majority of them of North African descent. The second biggest group – amounting to 3,2 millions – lives in Germany, 2,4 million of them Turkish. Other big minorities of Muslims are in the UK – 1,7 millions, many of them from Pakistan or India – and in Spain: 1,2 million stemming from North Africa. Austria and Switzerland have each approximately half a million inhabitants of Muslim faith.

The Muslim world is very heterogeneous. Apart from the two biggest schools of faith, the Sunnies and the Shias there are also different views inside these two schools of the Shar’iah. In the Sunni Islam there are the Hanafits, the Malakits, the Shafities and the Hanbalites. In Shia Islam, there are also different schools of faith and belief. All schools interpret the Shari’ah, the Islamic Law, in a different way – from small variances to total differences. This leads to the phenomenon that there is no universal Shari’ah based code of conduct in the Islamic World, having a significant impact on the  with many consequences also for Financial Services Institutions. Islam Investor is striving to address the needs of Shari’ah compliant financial services for all Muslims, no matter what school of Islam they belong to. Therefore Islam Investor obeys to strict Shari’ah restrictions of the Middle East, Shari’ah certification is based on the most common standards.