Mapped: Which Muslim-majority countries allow alcohol consumption?

Last month, Saudi Arabia made international headlines by quietly expanding access to alcohol for non-Muslim foreign residents earning at least 50,000 riyals ($13,300) a month. This move is just the latest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's attempts to modernise the country, abandoning the socially restrictive tenets of the conservative Wahhabist strand of Islam that has historically dictated Saudi policy.

The diversity of the Islamic world is obvious from the heterogeneous alcohol policies of many Muslim-majority countries. While Saudi Arabia is liberalising, Iraq has spent the last decade slowly implementing a ban, which is now in place everywhere but the autonomous Kurdish region.

Though some of the world's tightest controls on alcohol can be found in Muslim-majority countries and territories, so can some of the loosest. In Burkina Faso, Western Sahara, and elsehwere in the Sahel and West Africa there is no legal minimum age to buy alcohol, meaning it's common for young teenagers to get their hands on the stuff without a fake ID or a complicit adult.

The map below shows the legal status of alcohol purchases in 46 of the Muslim-majority countries worldwide. You can hover over countries for an explanation of their laws.

Of 46 countries with a majority Muslim population, alcohol is fully legal in 22. Most of these countries have some regulations around alcohol, including minimum ages, as is the case in most countries around the world with legal alcohol. 

Buying alcohol is completely banned in just six Muslim-majority countries, though there's even diversity of policy in these countries. While it's illegal for anyone to buy alcohol in Brunei, non-Muslims can import a limited quantity. That's not a difficult task, given that the tiny kingdom is surrounded by Malaysia, which also bans the sale of alcohol to Muslims but allows non-Muslims over 21 to buy it.

Perhaps the most creative iteration of an alcohol ban can be found in Kuwait, where it's technically legal to drink alcohol in your own home. However, buying, producing, or possessing alcohol in public (including in a car) is banned. This means that while it's legal to drink alcohol in the home, any method to get it there is banned.

The other 18 countries all have laws that fall somewhere between a full ban and full legality. In many countries, this means that buying alcohol is illegal for Muslims, but legal for non-Muslims, sometimes with a license, as is the case in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and now Saudi Arabia, or without, as in Malaysia, and Egypt. In some countries, including Turkmenistan and Tunisia, alcohol can't be purchased during Ramadan or other important dates in the Islamic calendar. 

Other policies include restricting alcohol consumption to certain venues, as in Algeria and Yemen, or to specific regions, as in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have tourist hotspots in their alcohol-friendly zones.