Languages of Muslim countries

Muslims believe that God revealed the Qur'an to the Muhammad literally, word-for-word, in the Arabic language.
Thus, Arabic is regarded as the holy language of Islam. However, there is no single "Muslim language" per se, as Islam, the faith of Muslims, is shared by people of many different ethnicities and languages.

Majority Muslim countries
Middle East
*Iranians speak Persian, Kurdish, Luri, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, and a number of other languages. (See Persian language and close languages and :*Afghanistan has three major languages, Pashto, Dari (Eastern Persian), and Uzbek, each belonging to ethnic groups (tribes) with the same names.
*Jordan, Iraq, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula Arabic
*Turkish people speak Turkish, a Turkic language very different from Arabic.
*Muslims of the Caucasus use numerous languages from three families: Turkic, Northeast Caucasian and Northwest Caucasian.

Africa
*Morocco: Besides the official Literary Arabic being used by official bodies, as is the case in most Arabic-speaking countries, Moroccan Arabic, also known as Darija or Darya, is the colloquial language. It is grammatically simpler, and has a less voluminous vocabulary than Standard Arabic. As in Algeria, most Moroccan Arabs live in the north of the country. Other Moroccans speak Berber languages such as Tachelhit and Tarifit.
*Berber languages can also be heard in Algeria, notably including Kabyle, spoken by the Kabyle Berbers in the north-east of Algeria. Another is the Chaouia language, or Hšawiya, spoken by the Chaoui southeast of the Kabyle region. See Languages of Algeria.
*Libya: Libyan Arabic
*Tunisia: Tunisian Arabic
*Mauritania: The official language of the country is Arabic, but common people of Arab-Berber origin use a distinct variety known as . Many people in the south of the country speak one of the national languages, such as Pulaar, Soninke or Wolof. These are also spoken in Senegal.
*Nigeria: primarily Hausa, but some Yoruba and Igbo speakers are also Muslim.
*Sudan: primarily a Sudanese dialect of Arabic
*Somalia: people primarily speak Somali which is one of the Cushitic languages.

Central Asia
*Muslims of Central Asia speak Turkic languages such as Uzbek, Uighur and Turkmen, excluding Tajikistan where a variety of Persian is spoken
South Asia
*Pakistan: Urdu, Pashto, Dari, Balochi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Hindko
*Bangladesh: Bengali, written in Bengali script not Arabic script

Southeast Asia
*Indonesia, the most populous "Muslim country" in the world speak Indonesian, other regional languages and dialects, the most widely spoken of which is Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese
*Malaysia: Malay (Bahasa Malaysia). Jawi script is one written form of Malay, and is used in religious and official government contexts.

Europe
*Bosnia (at least the Muslim component of federation; Bosniak population is almost exactly half of total population): Bosnian
*Albania and the newly declared (mostly unrecognised) republic of Kosovo: Albanian
*Al-Andalus: the former Islamic part of the Iberian peninsula had substantial population of Muladis and Catholics, that spoke Romance Mozarabic languages. The Islamic conquerors spoke Arabic and Berber. Christians and Jews used Latin and Hebrew as their religious language, but Arabic became the language of culture for all the population.

Countries with significant Muslim minorities
South and West Asia
*India: India has the , though Kashmiri-speaking Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state of India. Indian Muslims often share the Indian language spoken by non-Muslims of their state or locality; an ambiguous case is Urdu which forms a diasystem with Hindi and is considered the mother tongue of Muslims in the Hindi belt, though there are also some Urdu speakers in South India where it is a completely distinct language from the local Dravidian languages. Urdu is one of the official languages of India in Delhi, Bihar,Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Andhra Pradesh.
*Israel: Arabic
*Sri Lanka: .

East Asia
*China: A variety of languages are spoken by Chinese Muslims. Uyghurs in Xinjiang speak the Uyghur language, while the Hui generally speak Mandarin Chinese.
*Philippines: primarily Maguindanao, Maranao, Tausug, and other languages in Mindanao. Some Cebuano speakers are Muslims. Most speak Filipino, as well.
*Singapore: English, Malay,Tamil, other Indian languages such as Punjabi and Urdu and a confirmed but uncounted minority speak some variety of Chinese

Americas
*Canada: English and French
*United States: English

Europe
*France: French
*Germany: German
*Netherlands: Dutch
*Russia: Russian, Chechen and other languages of the Caucasus, Tatar and Bashkir
*United Kingdom: English

Language families

Spoken Arabic has many different vernaculars. Whether these are to be considered mere dialects or separate languages is a question of usually politically motivated debate. Many varieties of Arabic are treated as languages in linguistics, as well as being recognized as such by many of their speakers and in a few countries. The main branches of Arabic are Levantine Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and Maghrebi Arabic. Maltese is a descendant of an Arabic dialect, but spoken by a non-Muslim population. Chadian Arabic also extends to some areas with non-Muslim population, and many Arab countries have non-Muslim minorities.

*Most speakers of the living non-Semitic branches of the Afro-Asiatic languages (previously called Hamitic languages but now known not to be a genetic group) are Muslim. An exception is many speakers of Agaw languages.
*Most speakers of living Iranian languages are Muslim. An exception is Ossetian language.
*Most speakers of living Turkic languages are Muslim. Exceptions are Chuvash language and Yakut language.
*Most speakers of North Caucasian languages are Muslim. An exception is that the majority of Abkhaz people still in Abkhazia are Orthodox Christian.
*A majority of speakers of Austronesian languages live in Indonesia and Malaysia and are Muslim; however, the Philippines is also populous and is mostly Christian, and speakers of the large number of Austronesian languages in Oceania follow Christianity or traditional religions.
*A majority of speakers of Indo-Aryan languages are Hindu, but Muslim speakers are still numerous enough to make up 28% of all Muslims.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu