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Muslim population growth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World Muslim population by percentage (Pew Research Center, 2014)

Between 2015 and 2060, Muslim population is projected to increase by 70%, from 1.76 billion to 3 billion.[1] This compares with the 32% growth of world population during the same period.[2]

According to a study published in 2011 by Pew Research, whilst there is a lack of reliable data, religious conversion might have no net impact on the Muslim population as the number of people who convert to Islam is thought to be similar to those who leave Islam.[3][4][5] According to another study published in 2015 by the Pew Research Center, Islam is expected to gain a net of 3 million adherents through religious conversion between 2010 and 2050, which makes Islam the second largest religion in terms of net gains through religious conversion after religiously unaffiliated, mostly comes from Sub-Saharan Africa (2.9 million).[6] In 1900 Muslims only numbered 200 million followers or 12% of the world population. This percentage drastically increased over the last 100 years due to higher birth rate in Muslim majority countries.[7][8] Pew Research have estimated the number will be around 2.2 billion in 2030 and 2.8 billion, or 30 percent of world population, in 2050.[9][10]

By region

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World

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See also: Islam by country

The six fastest-growing religions in the world are estimated to be Islam (1.84%), the Baháʼí Faith (1.70%), Sikhism (1.62%), Jainism (1.57%), Hinduism (1.52%), and Christianity (1.38%), with high birth rates being cited as the major reason.[11]

Asia

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Islam is currently the largest religion in Asia. According to the Pew Research Center, 27.3% of the people living in the Asia-Pacific region in 2030 will be Muslim, up from about a quarter in 2010 (24.8%) and 21.6% in 1990.[3]

India

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Islam is the fastest-growing religion in India.[12] Growth rate of Muslims has been consistently higher than the growth rate of Hindus, ever since the census data of independent India has been available. For example, during the 1991–2001 decade, Muslim growth rate was 29.5% (vs 19.9% for Hindus). However, Muslims population growth rate declined to 24.6% during 2001–2011 decade, in keeping with the similar decline in most religious groups of India.[13][14][15][16]

In India regarding attitudes "toward birth control," younger (ages 10–19) Muslim women are supporting so. (ages 20–30). Regarding "knowledge of birth control," younger (ages 10–19) Muslim women know less than do older (ages 20–30). "Muslim marriages take place earlier" than other religions, and younger (ages 10–19).[17] A 2016 study suggested that urban north Indian Muslim women's use of contraceptives was more influenced by socioeconomic factors than by religion.[18] Making up 14.2% of the country's population with about 172 million adherents (2011 census).[19] In 2010, India had the second or third largest population of Muslims.[20]

China

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In China, Muslim population growth has been estimated to be as much as 2.7% from 1964 to 1982, however the Pew Research Center projects a slowing down of Muslim population growth in China.[21] By contrast, China's Christian population growth has been estimated at 4.7% based on total population figures from the year 1949.[22] The number of permitted births in China varies between one and three children depending on geographic area.[23]

Europe

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See also: Islam in Europe

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Europe.[24][25] According to the Pew Research Center, the Muslim population in Europe (excluding Turkey) was about 30 million in 1990, and 44 million in 2010; the Muslim share of the population increased from 4.1% in 1990 to 6% in 2010.[3] In recent years, "Europe has experienced a record influx of asylum seekers fleeing from Syria and predominantly Muslim countries" due to various conflicts in its country.[26] And, the wave of Muslim migrants has caused debates about immigration and security policies and raised questions about the current and future number of Muslims in Europe.[26] There were approximately 19 million Muslims in the European Union in 2010 or about (3.8%).[27] Data for the rates of growth of Islam in Europe reveal that the growing number of Muslims is due primarily to immigration.[28] Additionally, average Muslims today are younger and have a higher fertility than other Europeans.[26] Between the mid-2010 and mid-2016, migration was the biggest factor driving the growth of Muslim populations in Europe.[29] Approximately, 2.5 million Muslims came to Europe for reasons other than employment and education.[29] And, more than 1.3 million Muslims received and are expected to receive refugee status, allowing them to stay in Europe.[29]

In 2016, the median age of Muslims throughout Europe was 30.4, 13 years younger than the median age of other Europeans.[29] 50% of all European Muslims are younger than 30, however, only 32% of non-Muslims in Europe were under the age of 30.[29] A survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 2016 found that Muslims make up 4.9% of all Europe's population.[30] According to a same study conversion does not add significantly to the growth of the Muslim population in Europe, with roughly 160,000 more people leaving Islam than converting into Islam between 2010 and 2016.[30]

France

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In France, there are an estimated 100,000 Muslim converts, compared with about 50,000 in 1986.[31] The population mostly originate from the Maghreb, and, France is home to a third of EU Muslims.[32] As of mid-2016, there are 5.7 million Muslims in France (8.8% of the population) and the Muslim population continues to grow.[29]

Germany

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In Germany, there are approximately 5 million Muslims (6.1% of the population), and at least 2.3 million trace their origin to Turkey.[29][32] The "guest worker program" and the domination of Turkish religious authorities have increased German Islam.[32] A report from Pew found "Germany as the top destination for Muslim migrants between 2010 and 2016".Other Muslims have origins in Syria, Tunisia and Afghanistan [33]

United Kingdom

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The United Kingdom is home to 3.5 million Muslims (6.5% of the population) according to the 2021 census and has the highest number of Muslim migrants.[33][32] Most originate from South Asia, particularly Pakistan.[32]

Conversion

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Counting the number of converts to a religion is difficult, because some national censuses ask people about their religion, but they do not ask if they have converted to their present faith, and, in some countries, legal and social consequences make conversion difficult, such as the death sentence for leaving Islam in some Muslim countries.[34][35][36][37][38] Statistical data on conversion to and from Islam are scarce.[39] According to a study published in 2011 by Pew Research, what little information is available suggests that religious conversion has no net impact on the global Muslim population as the number of people who convert to Islam is roughly similar to those who leave Islam.[3][4][39] According to another study published on 2015 by Pew research center, Islam is expected to experience a modest gain of 3 million adherents through religious conversion between 2010 and 2050, although this modest impact will make Islam, compared with other religions, the second largest religion in terms of net gains through religious conversion after religiously unaffiliated, which expected has the largest net gains through religious conversion.[6]

According to The New York Times, an estimated 25% of American Muslims are converts.[40] In Britain, around 6,000 people convert to Islam per year and, according to a June 2000 article in the British Muslims Monthly Survey, the majority of new Muslim converts in Britain were women.[41] According to The Huffington Post, "observers estimate that as many as 20,000 Americans convert to Islam annually."[42]

According to Pew Research, the number of U.S. converts to Islam is roughly equal to the number of U.S. Muslims who leave the religion, unlike other religions, in which the number of those leaving is greater than the number of converts.[43] 77% of new converts to Islam are from Christianity, whereas 19% were from non-religion. Conversely, 55% of Muslims who left Islam became non-religious, and 22% converted to Christianity.[43] Data from the General Social Survey in the United States show that 32 percent of those raised Muslim no longer embrace Islam in adulthood, and 18 percent hold no religious identification.[44]

According to historian Geoffrey Blainey from the University of Melbourne, since the 1960s, there has been a substantial increase in the number of conversions from Islam to Christianity, mostly to the Evangelical and Pentecostal forms.[45] Many Muslims who convert to Christianity face social and governmental persecution.[45] According to 2015 Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background": A Global Census study published by Baylor University institute for studies of religion, an estimated 10.2 million Muslims have converted to Christianity based on global missionary data.[46] According to Guinness World Records 2003, approximately 12.5 million more people converted to Islam than people converted to Christianity between 1990 and 2000.[47]

Despite this, Islam remains, on the global level, the second religion with the second largest number of net converts into the religion, with about 420,000 more people converting to Islam than leaving Islam between 2015 and 2020.[48] This number being surpassed by the number of people (7,570,000) switching from "religious" to "unaffiliated".[49]

Historical Muslim population

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Historical estimate of Muslim population in the World.[4][50][51][52][better source needed]
Year World population Muslim population Islamic followers share (%)
1800 1 billion 91 million (9.1%)
1900 1.6 billion 200 million (12.5%)
1970 3.7 billion 577 million (15.6%)
2000 6.14 billion 1.291 billion (21%)
2013 7.21 billion 1.635 billion (22.7%)
2016 7.46 billion 1.8 billion (24.1%)
2020 7.8 billion 2 billion (26%)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "The Changing Global Religious Landscape". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
  2. ^ "Muslims projected to be fastest-growing major religious group". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
  3. ^ a b c d The Future of the Global Muslim Population (Report). Pew Research Center. 27 January 2011. Archived from the original on 24 December 2018. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  4. ^ a b c "Why Muslims are the world's fastest-growing religious group". Pew Research Center. 23 April 2015. Archived from the original on 20 March 2017. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  5. ^ Johnson, Todd M.; Grim, Brian J. (25 March 2013). The World's Religions in Figures: An Introduction to International Religious Demography. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118323038. Archived from the original on 9 December 2019. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  6. ^ a b "Cumulative Change Due to Religious Switching, 2010–2050, p.43" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2015. Retrieved 4 May 2016.
  7. ^ "Which religion will be the largest by the end of the century?".
  8. ^ "Statistics and Forecasts for World Religions: 1800-2025".
  9. ^ "The Future of the Global Muslim Population". 27 January 2011.
  10. ^ "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050". 2 April 2015.
  11. ^ "The List: The World's Fastest-Growing Religions". Foreign Policy. 14 May 2007. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 11 February 2020. Behind the trend: High birthrates in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
  12. ^ "Census of India". Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India. Archived from the original on 15 October 2007. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  13. ^ "Myth of Muslim growth". The Indian Express. 2 September 2015. Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
  14. ^ "Muslim population growth slows". The Hindu. 25 August 2015. ISSN 0971-751X. Archived from the original on 10 January 2016. Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  15. ^ "The Myth Of The Muslim Population Bomb". Tehelka. Archived from the original on 4 June 2016. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
  16. ^ "Five charts that puncture the bogey of Muslim population growth". Scroll.in. 8 April 2015. Archived from the original on 2 June 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
  17. ^ Shakeel, Ahmad (2003). Muslim Attitude Towards Family Planning. Sarup & Sons. pp. 26, 33, 47, 51. ISBN 9788176253895. Archived from the original on 2020-09-28. Retrieved 2020-02-11.
  18. ^ Constanze Weigl-Jäger (2016). "Islam and Contraception in Urban North India - Muslim Women's Reproductive Health Behavior and Decision-making". Interdisziplinäre Zeitschrift für Südasienforschung. 1 (2016). doi:10.11588/izsa.2016.1.845.
  19. ^ "By 2030, Muslims will make up 16 pc of India's population". Rediff News. 28 January 2011. Archived from the original on 18 July 2017. Retrieved 4 May 2014.
  20. ^ The Global Religious Landscape – Muslims. Pew Research Center (Report). 18 December 2012. Archived from the original on 16 March 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2015. India and Pakistan have Muslim populations of roughly similar size, and it is not entirely clear which is larger.
  21. ^ The Future of the Global Muslim Population - Region: Asia-Pacific (Report). Pew Research Center. 27 January 2011. Archived from the original on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  22. ^ Global Christianity: Regional Distribution of Christians. Pew Research Center (Report). 19 December 2011. Archived from the original on 3 May 2019. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
  23. ^ "Exemptions in China's 'one-child policy'". 5 November 2010. Archived from the original on 21 September 2016. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
  24. ^ Nachmani, Amikam (2010). Europe and its Muslim minorities: aspects of conflict, attempts at accord. Brighton: Sussex Academic. p. 35. ISBN 9781845194000.
  25. ^ Cherribi, Sam (2010). In the house of war: Dutch Islam observed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 33. ISBN 9780199734115.
  26. ^ a b c Europe's Growing Muslim Population (Report). Pew Research Center. 29 November 2017. Archived from the original on 8 May 2019. Retrieved 11 November 2019.
  27. ^ The Future of the Global Muslim Population - Region: Europe (Report). Pew Research Center. 27 January 2011. Archived from the original on 30 January 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  28. ^ "Muslims in Europe: Country guide". BBC News. 2005-12-23. Archived from the original on 2009-09-29. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
  29. ^ a b c d e f g "5 facts about the Muslim population in Europe". Pew Research Center. 29 November 2017. Archived from the original on 18 July 2016. Retrieved 11 November 2019.
  30. ^ a b Hackett, Conrad (November 29, 2017), "5 facts about the Muslim population in Europe", Pew Research Center
  31. ^ de la Baume, Maïa (3 February 2013). "More in France Are Turning to Islam, Challenging a Nation's Idea of Itself". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
  32. ^ a b c d e Vaïsse, Justin (8 September 2008). "Muslims in Europe: A short introduction" (PDF). Brookings Institution. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 September 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  33. ^ a b Sandford, Alasdair (30 November 2017). "What proportion of Europe's population is Muslim?". Euronews. Retrieved 11 November 2019.
  34. ^ "The Future of World Religions p.182" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2015. This analysis of religious switching draws on surveys in 19 countries where Muslims constitute a majority of the population. Generally, however, there are few reports of people disaffiliating from Islam in these countries. One reason for this may be the social and legal repercussions associated with disaffiliation in many Muslim-majority countries, up to and including the death penalty for apostasy. It is possible that, in the future, these societies could allow greater freedom for religious disaffiliation. The demographic projections in this report do not seek to predict the likelihood of such changes in political and social dynamics, or to model what the consequences might be.
  35. ^ "The Future of the Global Muslim Population". 27 January 2011. There are numerous reasons why reliable data on conversions are hard to come by. Some national censuses ask people about their religion, but they do not directly ask whether people have converted to their present faiths. A few cross-national surveys do contain questions about religious switching, but, even in those surveys, it is difficult to assess whether more people leave Islam than enter the faith. In some countries, legal and social consequences make conversion difficult, and survey respondents may be reluctant to speak honestly about the topic. Additionally, for many Muslims, Islam is not just a religion but an ethnic or cultural identity that does not depend on whether a person actively practices the faith. This means that even nonpracticing or secular Muslims may still consider themselves, and be viewed by their neighbors, as Muslims.
  36. ^ Laws Criminalizing Apostasy Archived 11 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Library of Congress (2014)
  37. ^ Apostasy Archived 4 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine Oxford Islamic Studies Online, Oxford University Press (2012)
  38. ^ "The countries where apostasy is punishable by death". indy100. 7 May 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  39. ^ a b "The Future of the Global Muslim Population". 27 January 2011. there is no substantial net gain or loss in the number of Muslims through conversion, globally; the number of people who become Muslims through conversion seems to be roughly equal to the number of Muslims who leave the faith
  40. ^ Elliott, Andrea (30 April 2005). "Muslim Converts Face Discrimination". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 22 May 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  41. ^ "British Muslims Monthly Survey for June 2000, Vol. VIII, No. 6". Women convert. Archived from the original on 2008-02-14. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
  42. ^ Sacirbey, Omar (24 August 2011). "Conversion To Islam One Result Of Post-9/11 Curiosity". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 29 June 2017. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
  43. ^ a b Besheer Mohamed; Elizabeth Pobrebarac Sciupac (26 January 2018). "The share of Americans who leave Islam is offset by those who become Muslim". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on 16 May 2019. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  44. ^ Darren E. Sherkat (22 June 2015). "Losing Their Religion: When Muslim Immigrants Leave Islam". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 2018-11-29. Retrieved 2016-09-18.
  45. ^ a b Blainey, Geoffrey (2011). A Short History of Christianity. Penguin Random House Australia. ISBN 9781742534169. Since the 1960s, there has been a substantial increase in the number of Muslims who have converted to Christianity
  46. ^ Johnstone, Patrick; Miller, Duane Alexander (2015). "Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census". Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. 11: 8. Archived from the original on 20 June 2020. Retrieved 30 October 2015.
  47. ^ Folkard, Claire (2014-12-22). Guinness World Records 2003 - Google Books. Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553586367. Archived from the original on 2014-12-22. Retrieved 2021-02-05.
  48. ^ "The Changing Global Religious Landscape". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2021-01-28.
  49. ^ https://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/03/PF_17.04.05_projectionsUpdate_switching640px.png [bare URL image file]
  50. ^ "Statistics and Forecasts for World Religions: 1800-2025". christianityinview.com.
  51. ^ Roser, Max; Ritchie, Hannah; Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban (May 9, 2013). "World Population Growth". Our World in Data – via ourworldindata.org.
  52. ^ "World Population by Year - Worldometer". www.worldometers.info.
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