About 292 million, or 92 percent, of the Middle East's people are Muslims: the majority Sunni sect, the Shiite sect (which broke away soon after the Prophet Muhammad's death in A.D. 632), and smaller groups such as Druze and Alawite. Some 12 million Middle Easterners are Christian, many of them Arabs of denominations, such as Coptic or Maronite, that are among Christianity's oldest. Five million people in the region are Jews, nearly all of them living in Israel. Immigration of Jews to Israel has come in waves, first from Europe, then from around the world. The result has been the peopling of the Jewish state with a mix of ethnic groups whose cultures, traditions, politics, and practices of Judaism vary widely and are freely expressed.