Muslim world but are rapidly increasing. In the Eastern Middle East, Iran has a high level of youth literacy at 98%, whereas Iraq's youth literacy rate has sharply declined from 85% to 57%, during the American-led war and subsequent occupation. Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, has a very high youth literacy rate at 99%. In Afghanistan, seminaries are operated by politically active religious organizations and have taken the place of basic education not provided and funded by the government. A 2016 Pew Research Center study about religion and education around the world found that Muslims have the lowest average
Muslim world as state recognition) should qualify a given country. One commonly supported rule of thumb is a Muslim population of more than 50%. Jones (2005) defines a "large minority" as being between 30% and 50%, which described nine countries in 2000, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Nigeria, and Tanzania. According to a 2010 study and released January 2011, Islam has 1.5 billion adherents, making up over 22% of the world population. According to the Pew Research Center in 2015 there were 50 Muslim-majority countries. Worldatlas.com (April 2017) identified 45 'Islamic countries'. Among the Islamic states