Islam Is the World’s Fastest-Growing Religion: Study

A new study has found that the world’s Muslim population has increased more than all the other religions combined over a ten-year period, primarily because of natural demographic growth, making Islam the fastest-growing religion.

The study, published by the Pew Research Center’s Global Religious Landscape, concluded that Muslims are the fastest-growing faith group after measuring the evolution of the global religious population between 2010 and 2020.

The study said while Christianity remains the largest religion, with 2.3 billion believers, its share of the global population has declined by about 1.8 percent since 2010, while Islam’s share has increased.

The report also noted that the world’s Muslim population increased by 347 million people over 10 years, adding that the change in Muslim population size had “little to do with people converting into or out of the faith” at the global level.

“We look at the demographic characteristics of these groups, their age structure, how many children they’re having, how much education they have, because these demographic characteristics affect the future size of the religious groups,” Conrad Hackett, a senior demographer at Pew Research Center, said.

“Muslims have more children and are younger, on average, than members of any other major religion,” the study said.

“Based on data for the 2015-2020 period, we estimated a Muslim woman would have 2.9 children, on average, in her lifetime, compared with 2.2 children per non-Muslim woman,” it added.

The increase in the number of Muslims in the world was concentrated primarily in Muslim-majority countries, with much of the growth in the Asia Pacific region, which is home to the largest Muslim population, increasing by 16.2% between 2010 and 2020.

Islam is the world’s second-largest religion, with around two billion people, or around a quarter of the world’s population.

It grew by nearly 350 million people since 2010, almost three times as much as Christianity and more than all other religions combined.

According to Pew’s study, Christians are still a majority in 60 percent of all countries and territories surveyed. However, Christianity decreased by at least five percent in 40 countries, while only significantly increasing in one.

source:presstv