Islam is the world’s second-largest religion, with roughly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world in 2010.That’s roughly 23 per cent of the global population.
Christianity is the largest currently, but Islam is set to overtake by 2070, according to research by the Pew Research Centre.
This is because the Muslim population is growing faster than any major religious group.
10% of all Europeans are projected to be members of the Muslim faith by 2050, according to this research.
The study estimates that from 2010 to 2050, Muslims will have increased across the world by 73%, followed by Christians who are projected to grow by 35% during the same time period, and Hindus at 34%.
That means that Islam – currently the world’s second-largest religion – will surpass Christianity as the world’s biggest religion by the end of the century, the study projects.
Muslims tend to have more children than members of other religious groups. Around the world, each Muslim woman has an average of 3.1 children, compared with 2.3 for other religions combined.
Islam also has the youngest worshippers with the median age was 23 in 2010.
This means a larger share of Muslims are ready to have children imminently and are likely to fuel Muslim population growth.
The same dynamics hold true in many countries where Muslims live in large numbers alongside other religious groups. For example, India’s number of Muslims is growing at a faster rate than the country’s majority Hindu population, and is projected to rise from 14.9% of India’s 2015 population to 19.4% (or 333 million people) in 2060. And while there were similar numbers of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria as of 2015, Muslims have higher fertility there and are expected to grow to a solid majority of Nigeria’s population (60.5%) in 2060.
Attitudes to Islam vary across Europe, the same study found, with the UK among the most favorable to Muslims in their country.
An estimate made in 2015 calculated that there are 4.4 to 4.7 million Muslims in Germany (5.4–5.7% of the population). Of these, 1.9 million are German citizens (2.4%). As of 2006, about 15,000 Muslims are converts of ethnic German ancestry. According to the German statistical office 9.1% of all newborns in Germany had Muslim parents in 2005
Islam is the largest minority religion in the country, with the Protestant and Roman Catholic confessions being the majority religions. There are between 2.1 and 4.7 million Muslims.
CNN – 17th Mars 2017
