In 2023, the population of Muslims in Israel was estimated at 1.77 million. This marked an increase of 2 percent compared to the previous year. The Muslim community in the country formed the largest religious minority in the country.

In 2023, Jerusalem was the city with the largest population of Muslim residents in Israel, reaching 379,600 people. This represented about 38 percent of the city's total population. The town with the second-highest number of Muslims was Rahat, with 78,500 members of the religion. Rahat is a predominantly Bedouin city in southern Israel. Umm al-Fahm and Nazareth, both located in northern Israel, make up a sizeable portion of the Muslim community in Israel.

At the end of 2023, the population of Israel reached almost 9.7 million permanent residents. Jewish residents formed the largest religious group, with just over 7.15 million people. The Muslim population in the country, formed the largest religious minority at over 1.7 million individuals. Conversely, the smallest religious group was that of the Druze with about 151,000 people.

Jews were the dominant religious group in the Israel-Palestine region at the beginning of the first millennia CE, and are the dominant religious group there today, however, there was a period of almost 2,000 years where most of the world's Jews were displaced from their spiritual homeland. Antiquity to the 20th century Jewish hegemony in the region began changing after a series of revolts against Roman rule led to mass expulsions and emigration. Roman control saw severe persecution of Jewish and Christian populations, but this changed when the Byzantine Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion in the 4th century. Christianity then dominated until the 7th century, when the Rashidun Caliphate (the first to succeed Muhammad) took control of the Levant. Control of region split between Christians and Muslims intermittently between the 11th and 13th centuries during the Crusades, although the population remained overwhelmingly Muslim. Zionism until today Through the Paris Peace Conference, the British took control of Palestine in 1920. The Jewish population began growing through the Zionist Movement after the 1880s, which sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Rising anti-Semitism in Europe accelerated this in the interwar period, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, many European Jews chose to leave the continent. The United Nations tried facilitating the foundation of separate Jewish and Arab states, yet neither side was willing to concede territory, leading to a civil war and a joint invasion from seven Arab states. Yet the Jews maintained control of their territory and took large parts of the proposed Arab territory, forming the Jewish-majority state of Israel in 1948, and acheiving a ceasefire the following year. Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result of this conflict, while most Jews from the Arab eventually fled to Israel. Since this time, Israel has become one of the richest and advanced countries in the world, however, Palestine has been under Israeli military occupation since the 1960s and there are large disparities in living standards between the two regions.

In 2023, more than 65 percent of Muslim families in Israel led a traditional lifestyle, in terms of religious practice. Religious or very-religious families, which made up over 25 percent of the Muslim population. On the other hand, only 5.4 percent of Muslim families were secular.

In 2021, 57 percent of the Muslim population aged 15 and over held the marital status of married. On the other hand, 37 percent of the community members were registered as single. Divorced and widowed people each accounted for three percent of the population.

In 1995, Israel had a Jewish population of approximately 4.5 million people, of whom approximately 1.75 million were born abroad. Over one million of these immigrants were born in Europe, with over 650,000 of these born in the former Soviet Union. Despite Poland having the largest Jewish population in the world in the pre-WWII years, the number of Polish Jewish migrants and descendents in Israel was relatively small in 1995 when compared to the USSR due to the impact of the Holocaust.

Outside of Europe, Morocco had the largest number of Jewish immigrants and descendents in Israel by 1995. Morocco had the largest Jewish population in the Muslim world when Israel was founded in 1948, with over 250,000 people. Many Moroccan Jews sought to emigrate to Israel at this time, but often faced resistance from authorities and local populations who believed the Jews would join in the fight against the Arab forces seeking to establish a Muslim state in Palestine. The government of Morocco then officially prohibited emigration to Israel after gaining independence from France in 1956, however this policy was reversed in 1961 whereby the Moroccan government began facilitating Jewish emigration to Israel in return for payments from Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Israel. By the 1970s, Morocco's Jewish population had fallen to less than 15 percent of its size in 1948.

The average life expectancy of Jewish women in Israel in 2022 was 85.1 years, the highest among all groups. This was followed by Muslim women with a life expectancy of 81.8 years, and Jewish men at 81.5 years of age. Muslim men had the lowest life expectancy of 77 years. Over the period observed, the life expectancy of both Jewish and Muslim populations increased, with women consistently living longer their male counterparts.

In 2021, the divorce rate among members of the Muslim population in Israel between the ages of 45 and 49 was the highest among the age groups, at 11.3 percent, followed closely by the 50-54 age group in the community, at 11.1 percent. Overall, more than half of all divorcees among the Muslim population in Israel were 35 years of age or older.

In 2023, the Jewish population had the highest total fertility rate in Israel, at an average of 3 births per woman. Muslim women, on the other hand, had a rate of 2.81 children. The Druze and Christian religious communities had a total fertility rate of 1.75 and 1.64, respectively.

Israël: Muslims as percent of the total population: Pour cet indicateur, The Cline Center for Democracy fournit des données pour la Israël de 1960 à 2013. La valeur moyenne pour Israël pendant cette période était de 13.3 pour cent avec un minimum de 9 pour cent en 1960 et un maximum de 18 pour cent en 2009.

Israël: Shia Muslims as percent of the total population: Pour cet indicateur, The Cline Center for Democracy fournit des données pour la Israël de à . La valeur moyenne pour Israël pendant cette période était de pour cent avec un minimum de pour cent en et un maximum de pour cent en .

As of 2023, the youngest population group by religion in Israel were Muslims, with a median age of 24 years. On the other hand, the religious group was that of Christians of Arab ethnicity, at 35 years. The median age among Jews, the most populous group in the country, was 31.6.

​ “Middle East” LanguagesIndependent StudyFebruary 16, 2012Amanda DoyleCo-authors: Kevin Ragborg, Marc Puricelli, and Maria LindellDespite the relatively small geographical size of the “Middle East,” there is great diversity of the spoken languages within the region. The most common spoken language of the “Middle East” is Arabic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew that was developed beginning in the 8th century BC. Currently, around 280 million people speak Arabic in the regions of the “Middle East” and North Africa encompassing the countries between Morocco to Iraq. The Qur’an, the central religious text of Islam, is only allowed to be written in Arabic, giving the language a very important role in the Muslim world. Different from some other languages, there are many different dialects of Arabic, which can make it difficult for speakers from different areas of the Arabic speaking world to understand one another3. The next major language of the Middle East is Persian or Farsi, the national language of Iran. Persian is spoken by an estimated 65 million people, most of which are concentrated in Iran but there are significant Persian speaking populations in Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates. Younger than Arabic, Persian was developed around 400 BC and is closely related to Hindi and Urdu. There are three main dialects of Persian: Iranian Persian (spoken in Iran), Dari Persian (spoken in Afghanistan) and Tajik Persian (spoken in Tajikistan.) 4Hebrew is spoken by roughly 3.8 million people in the “Middle East,” but this population is now concentrated in Israel and the neighboring countries. Though, not all Jews, even Israeli Jews, speak Hebrew since centuries ago, Hebrew ceased being a working language; however, due to Jewish nationalism, the Zionist movement, and the need for a unifying language between immigrants into Israel the language has been revived. Turkish, the national language of Turkey and the main spoken language of the Turkish nation is also spoken by roughly 170,000 people in Cyprus and by minorities in the Fertile Crescent area. Kurdish is the language that unifies the Kurds, a nation that spans a large geographical range from Beirut to Afghanistan. Additionally, almost all countries in the “Middle East” have several minority languages, such as Berber, spoken by many North Africans, including some parts of northwestern Egypt. Azeri, a minority Turkic language, is often spoken in northwestern Iran. Turkish tribes in the southern Zagros Mountains in Iran speak Qashqai, while Baluchi is spoken in southeastern and eastern Iran by the Baluch peoples and migrants in United Arab Emirates and Oman. Nomadic tribes in the Zagros Mountains can be found speaking Luri. Lastly, Armenian, due to its historical significance is spoken by minorities in urban centers such as Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Tehran, and Cairo1.Works Cited (1) Held, Colbert C. Middle East Patterns – Places, Peoples and Politics. 2nd ed. Westview Press, Inc.: Boulder, Co, 1994, pgs. 76-80.(2) The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. 2011. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2098.html?countryName=Jordan&countryCode=jo&regionCode=me&#jo.(3) "Learn Arabic - All About the Arabic Language." Innovative Language Learning. Web. 28 Mar. 2011. http://innovativelanguage.com/languagelearning/arabic-language.(4) UCLA, Language Materials Projects. "Persian Language." Iran Chamber Society. Web. 29 Mar. 2011. http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/articles/persian_language.php.

The two countries with the greatest shares of the world's Jewish population are the United States and Israel. The United States had been a hub of Jewish immigration since the nineteenth century, as Jewish people sought to escape persecution in Europe by emigrating across the Atlantic. The Jewish population in the U.S. is largely congregated in major urban areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, with the New York metropolitan area being the city with the second largest Jewish population worldwide, after Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel is the world's only officially Jewish state, having been founded in 1948 following the first Arab-Israeli War. While Jews had been emigrating to the holy lands since the nineteenth century, when they were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, immigration increased rapidly following the establishment of the state of Israel. Jewish communities in Eastern Europe who had survived the Holocaust saw Israel as a haven from persecution, while the state encouraged immigration from Jewish communities in other regions, notably the Middle East & North Africa. Smaller Jewish communities remain in Europe in countries such as France, the UK, and Germany, and in other countries which were hotspots for Jewish migration in the twentieth century, such as Canada and Argentina.

The Bahá’í faith is one of the world's youngest major religions, having been founded in 19th century Persia (now Iran) by the prophet Bahá’u’lláh. Bahá’u’lláh had been a follower of a merchant called the Báb, who had developed a substantial following in Persia after claiming to be a manifestation of god. This small but growing religion was brutally suppressed by the Shia Muslim authorities in Persia, with the Báb himself being executed in 1850. Following this, Bahá’u’lláh fled into exile in Baghdad, in present-day Iraq, where he began to preach that he was the next in the line of God's messengers after the Báb. Both of the prophets claimed the lineage of all Abrahamic religions, combining beliefs from Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Bahá’u’lláh was eventually forced to settle in the coastal city of ‘Akká, Palestine (now Acre, Israel) where he died in 1892. The site of his death became the central place of pilgrimage in the Bahá’í faith, and is why the center of the religion is today in the nearby city of Haifa. Beliefs of the Bahá’í The Bahá’í are perhaps unique for a major religion, as rather than emphasizing the correctness of their own beliefs over other religions, followers of Bahá’í believe that there is truth in all world religions and that there should be peace and harmony among the different faiths. Bahá’ís recognize the prophets and messengers of the different world religions as all part of the same process of revelation by God to humanity. While they believe in plurality among those who bring God's message, the Bahá’í are monotheistic and believe in only one god, rather than multiple. Bahá’u’lláh taught that the different religions developed to convey the same message of God, but in different societies and time periods, meaning that the message has been delivered in different ways to suit the needs of the time and place. The key teachings of the Bahá’í faith include the unity of science and religion, equality between different peoples and religions, the importance of education and tolerance, and the unity of world religions due to the oneness of God. Today it is estimated that over five million people follow the teachings of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh worldwide.