The states and territories with the highest proportion of Muslims are New South Wales (3.58%) and Victoria (3.32%), whereas those with the lowest are Queensland (0.95%) and Tasmania (0.49%). 4.2% of people in Greater Melbourne are Muslim. Many Muslims living there are Bosnian and Turkish.
The proportion of Muslims was highest among immigrants from Jordan (40% of Jordanian Australians are Muslim), followed by Syria (34% of Syrian Australians are Muslim) and Iraq (31% of Iraqi Australians are Muslim). Arab Australians are mainly concentrated in Victoria and New South Wales.
The country with the single largest population of Muslims is Indonesia in Southeast Asia, which on its own hosts 13% of the world's Muslims.
Other religions are growing but continue to make up a small proportion of the population. Hinduism has grown by 55.3 per cent to 684,002 people, or 2.7 per cent of the population. Islam has grown to 813,392 people, which is 3.2 per cent of the Australian population.
Hinduism is Australia's fastest growing religion. The diversity of modern Australia connects us to every part of the world, including South Asia.
According to the 2016 census, almost 50,000 Muslims now live in Perth – eight per cent of the Australian Muslim population.
281,578 Muslims (1.5 per cent of the population) live in Australia. 14,990 Muslims live in Queensland. 10,463 Muslims live in Brisbane, mostly on the southside. About one-third of all Australian Muslims were born here.
The main regions of the world with a predominantly Islamic population are located in Central Asia, the entire Middle East and Western Asia (except Armenia and Israel), all of North Africa, and many countries in West Africa, South Asia, and Maritime Southeast Asia. In how many countries is Islam the main religion?
Lebanese Muslims form the core of Australia's Muslim Arab population, particularly in Sydney where most Arabs in Australia live. Approximately 3.4% of Sydney's population are Muslim.
About 90 percent of the Australian Jewish community live in Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne Ports has the largest Jewish community of any electorate in Australia. The Jewish Community Council of Victoria has estimated that 60,000 Australian Jews live in Victoria.
As the city with the largest overseas-born population in Australia, Sydney is an important entry point for many new arrivals to the country. Sydney is not only home to a number of established migrant communities, but also hosts a number of higher education institutions and businesses which draw in overseas migrants.
Christianity is the largest religion in Australia, with a total of 43.9% of the nation-wide population identifying with a Christian denomination in the 2021 census.
In 2021 the most common religions were: Christianity (43.9%) No religion (38.9%) Islam (3.2%)
The main reasons for Islam's growth ultimately involve simple demographics. To begin with, Muslims have more children than members of the seven other major religious groups analyzed in the study.
Individuals are motivated to convert for many reasons: some relate to personal transformation and identity, others to external social and political factors. Theological explanations are often given, and many converts consider themselves destined or called by God to turn to Islam.
Modern growth. Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world. In 1990, 1.1 billion people were Muslims, while in 2010, 1.6 billion people were Muslims.
From around 30 or so Muslim families residing in Canberra in the early 1970s, the Muslim population in Canberra and its surrounding region has now grown to around 8,000 persons.
Another migrant-dominated area, Mirrabooka, is also multi-faith, with more than 20 per cent of its 8100 residents adherents of Islam. On top of its big Muslim population, the highest in the State, almost one in five people says they are Catholic and another 10 per cent are Buddhist.