Arabic is the official language of 21 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, from Oman in the east to Mauritania in the west. This includes Israel, where Arabic is, after Hebrew, the second official language. Significant Arab minorities exist in Iran, Turkey, Chad, and Nigeria, as well as in western Europe and the Americas. With approximately 280 million native speakers, Arabic is by far the largest living representative of the Semitic language family. Because it is the language of the Koran and thus the liturgical language of Islam, Arabic also plays an important role for more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide.