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.

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.

In 2023, Jerusalem was the city with the largest population of Muslim residents in Israel, reaching ******* people. This represented about ** percent of the city's total population. The town with the second-highest number of Muslims was Rahat, with ****** 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.

Israel: Sunni Muslims as percent of the total population: The latest value from is percent, unavailable from percent in . In comparison, the world average is 0.0 percent, based on data from countries. Historically, the average for Israel from to is percent. The minimum value, percent, was reached in while the maximum of percent was recorded in .

According to a 2024 survey, some ** percent of Jews in Israel were secular, while **** identified as ultra-orthodox. On the other hand, less than ** percent of Muslims in Israel were non-religious, and some ** percent identified as religious.

Between Oct. 14, 2014, and May 21, 2015, Pew Research Center, with generous funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Neubauer Family Foundation, completed 5,601 face-to-face interviews with non-institutionalized adults ages 18 and older living in Israel.

The survey sampling plan was based on six districts defined in the 2008 Israeli census. In addition, Jewish residents of West Bank (Judea and Samaria) were included.

The sample includes interviews with 3,789 respondents defined as Jews, 871 Muslims, 468 Christians and 439 Druze. An additional 34 respondents belong to other religions or are religiously unaffiliated. Five groups were oversampled as part of the survey design: Jews living in the West Bank, Haredim, Christian Arabs, Arabs living in East Jerusalem and Druze.

Interviews were conducted under the direction of Public Opinion and Marketing Research of Israel (PORI). Surveys were administered through face-to-face, paper and pencil interviews conducted at the respondent's place of residence. Sampling was conducted through a multi-stage stratified area probability sampling design based on national population data available through the Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics' 2008 census.

The questionnaire was designed by Pew Research Center staff in consultation with subject matter experts and advisers to the project. The questionnaire was translated into Hebrew, Russian and Arabic, independently verified by professional linguists conversant in regional dialects and pretested prior to fieldwork.

The questionnaire was divided into four sections. All respondents who took the survey in Russian or Hebrew were branched into the Jewish questionnaire (Questionnaire A). Arabic-speaking respondents were branched into the Muslim (Questionnaire B), Christian (Questionnaire C) or Druze questionnaire (D) based on their response to the religious identification question. For the full question wording and exact order of questions, please see the questionnaire.

Note that not all respondents who took the questionnaire in Hebrew or Russian are classified as Jews in this study. For further details on how respondents were classified as Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze in the study, please see sidebar in the report titled "http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/" Target="_blank">"How Religious are Defined".

Following fieldwork, survey performance was assessed by comparing the results for key demographic variables with population statistics available through the census. Data were weighted to account for different probabilities of selection among respondents. Where appropriate, data also were weighted through an iterative procedure to more closely align the samples with official population figures for gender, age and education. The reported margins of sampling error and the statistical tests of significance used in the analysis take into account the design effects due to weighting and sample design.

In addition to sampling error and other practical difficulties, one should bear in mind that question wording also can have an impact on the findings of opinion polls.

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.

56 percent of the Muslim population in Israel aged 15 and over held the marital status of married in 2022. On the other hand, 38 percent of the community members were registered as single. Divorced and widowed people each accounted for three percent of the population.

According to a survey, most Muslims in Israel ate halal consistently in 2024, in accordance with the Sharia principles. On the other hand, only 2.5 percent of Muslims reported not eating halal at all.

Israël: Sunni 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 .

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

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

Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) at Indiana University Dataset on bias against Asians, Blacks, Jews, Latines, and Muslims

The ISCA project compiled this dataset using an annotation portal, which was used to label tweets as either biased or non-biased, among other labels. Note that the annotation was done on live data, including images and context, such as threads. The original data comes from annotationportal.com. They include representative samples of live tweets from the years 2020 and 2021 with the keywords "Asians, Blacks, Jews, Latinos, and Muslims". A random sample of 600 tweets per year was drawn for each of the keywords. This includes retweets. Due to a sampling error, the sample for the year 2021 for the keyword "Jews" has only 453 tweets from 2021 and 147 from the first eight months of 2022 and it includes some tweets from the query with the keyword "Israel." The tweets were divided into six samples of 100 tweets, which were then annotated by three to seven students in the class "Researching White Supremacism and Antisemitism on Social Media" taught by Gunther Jikeli, Elisha S. Breton, and Seth Moller at Indiana University in the fall of 2022, see this report. Annotators used a scale from 1 to 5 (confident not biased, probably not biased, don't know, probably biased, confident biased). The definitions of bias against each minority group used for annotation are also included in the report. If a tweet called out or denounced bias against the minority in question, it was labeled as "calling out bias." The labels of whether a tweet is biased or calls out bias are based on a 75% majority vote. We considered "probably biased" and "confident biased" as biased and "confident not biased," "probably not biased," and "don't know" as not biased.
The types of stereotypes vary widely across the different categories of prejudice. While about a third of all biased tweets were classified as "hate" against the minority, the stereotypes in the tweets often matched common stereotypes about the minority. Asians were blamed for the Covid pandemic. Blacks were seen as inferior and associated with crime. Jews were seen as powerful and held collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel. Some tweets denied the Holocaust. Hispanics/Latines were portrayed as being in the country illegally and as "invaders," in addition to stereotypical accusations of being lazy, stupid, or having too many children. Muslims, on the other hand, were often collectively blamed for terrorism and violence, though often in conversations about Muslims in India.

Content:

This dataset contains 5880 tweets that cover a wide range of topics common in conversations about Asians, Blacks, Jews, Latines, and Muslims. 357 tweets (6.1 %) are labeled as biased and 5523 (93.9 %) are labeled as not biased. 1365 tweets (23.2 %) are labeled as calling out or denouncing bias. 1180 out of 5880 tweets (20.1 %) contain the keyword "Asians," 590 were posted in 2020 and 590 in 2021. 39 tweets (3.3 %) are biased against Asian people. 370 tweets (31,4 %) call out bias against Asians. 1160 out of 5880 tweets (19.7%) contain the keyword "Blacks," 578 were posted in 2020 and 582 in 2021. 101 tweets (8.7 %) are biased against Black people. 334 tweets (28.8 %) call out bias against Blacks. 1189 out of 5880 tweets (20.2 %) contain the keyword "Jews," 592 were posted in 2020, 451 in 2021, and ––as mentioned above––146 tweets from 2022. 83 tweets (7 %) are biased against Jewish people. 220 tweets (18.5 %) call out bias against Jews. 1169 out of 5880 tweets (19.9 %) contain the keyword "Latinos," 584 were posted in 2020 and 585 in 2021. 29 tweets (2.5 %) are biased against Latines. 181 tweets (15.5 %) call out bias against Latines. 1182 out of 5880 tweets (20.1 %) contain the keyword "Muslims," 593 were posted in 2020 and 589 in 2021. 105 tweets (8.9 %) are biased against Muslims. 260 tweets (22 %) call out bias against Muslims.

File Description:

The dataset is provided in a csv file format, with each row representing a single message, including replies, quotes, and retweets. The file contains the following columns:
'TweetID': Represents the tweet ID.
'Username': Represents the username who published the tweet (if it is a retweet, it will be the user who retweetet the original tweet.
'Text': Represents the full text of the tweet (not pre-processed). 'CreateDate': Represents the date the tweet was created.
'Biased': Represents the labeled by our annotators if the tweet is biased (1) or not (0). 'Calling_Out': Represents the label by our annotators if the tweet is calling out bias against minority groups (1) or not (0). 'Keyword': Represents the keyword that was used in the query. The keyword can be in the text, including mentioned names, or the username.

Licences

Data is published under the terms of the "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International" licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the technical collaboration with Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe). We thank all class participants for the annotations and contributions, including Kate Baba, Eleni Ballis, Garrett Banuelos, Savannah Benjamin, Luke Bianco, Zoe Bogan, Elisha S. Breton, Aidan Calderaro, Anaye Caldron, Olivia Cozzi, Daj Crisler, Jenna Eidson, Ella Fanning, Victoria Ford, Jess Gruettner, Ronan Hancock, Isabel Hawes, Brennan Hensler, Kyra Horton, Maxwell Idczak, Sanjana Iyer, Jacob Joffe, Katie Johnson, Allison Jones, Kassidy Keltner, Sophia Knoll, Jillian Kolesky, Emily Lowrey, Rachael Morara, Benjamin Nadolne, Rachel Neglia, Seungmin Oh, Kirsten Pecsenye, Sophia Perkovich, Joey Philpott, Katelin Ray, Kaleb Samuels, Chloe Sherman, Rachel Weber, Molly Winkeljohn, Ally Wolfgang, Rowan Wolke, Michael Wong, Jane Woods, Kaleb Woodworth, and Aurora Young. This work used Jetstream2 at Indiana University through allocation HUM200003 from the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.

The rate of criminal convictions among Muslim men in Israel in 2021 was 1,082 per 100,000 people. This was significantly higher than non-Muslim men, with the rate of 388 per 100,000. Muslim women had a total conviction rate of 40 per 100,000, the same as non-Muslim women.

According to a survey, ** percent of Muslims in the workforce in Israel did not work on Fridays during 2024. Meanwhile, ** percent of respondents did work on Fridays as usual, and *** percent of Muslims reported working from home on the Islamic day of rest.

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 ****.

The rate of criminal convictions among Muslim men in Israel in 2021 was *** among minors and ***** for adults per 100,000 people. The rates for non-Muslim men were lower, at *** for minors and *** for adults. For adult women, the conviction rates were ** per 100,000 for Muslims and ** for non-Muslim women.

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

The rate of criminal convictions among Muslims in Israel in 2021 was *** per 100,000 people. In comparison, the conviction rates for non-Muslims were *** per 100,000 people.

In 2023, Muslim nuclear families in Israel predominantly consisted of couples with children under the age of 17, making up 59 percent of households. Couples with children over the age of 18 accounted for 16 percent, while couples without children represented 12 percent of the Muslim family units.