Muslims to equal Christians by 2050
Islam will grow faster than any other major religion and if the current trends continue, the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world by 2050.
By then, according to Pew Research Center’s latest report, Hindus will be the third largest religious group, surpassing the number of people with no religious affiliation.
“Muslims will be more numerous in the US than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion,” said the report titled “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050”, released on Thursday.
It projected that India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.
The report pointed out that atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.
In Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population. In the US, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion.
The Center’s new demographic projections have taken into account the current size and geographic distribution of the world’s major religions, age differences, fertility and mortality rates, international migration and patterns in conversion.
As of 2010, Christianity was by far the world’s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth. Islam was the second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23% of the global population.
According to the projections, between 2010 and 2050, the world’s total population is expected to rise to 9.3 billion, a 35% increase.
Over that same period, Muslims – a comparatively youthful population with high fertility rates – are projected to increase by 73%. The number of Christians also is projected to rise, but more slowly, at about the same rate (35%) as the global population overall.
The trends show, four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.
“With the exception of Buddhists, all of the world’s major religious groups are poised for at least some growth in absolute numbers in the coming decades,” the report observed.
It added that the global Buddhist population is expected to be fairly stable because of low fertility rates and aging populations in countries such as China, Thailand and Japan.