Islam will become largest religion in the world if current demographic trends continue: Pew report

A new report by Pew Research Centre  has said that Islam will become the largest religion in the world by 2050 if the current demographic trends continue.

The report also said that Muslims form the fastest-growing religious group in the world. From 2010 to 2050, their population is estimated to grow by 73 percent, according to the report.

It also said that West Asia is home to only 20 percent of Muslims. Around 62 percent of the Muslim population lives in Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Pew Research Centre had also published a report last year in which it had been stated that India will overtake Indonesia as the country with the largest Muslim population, according to a new study.

According to the Pew Research Centre’s religious profile predictions assessed data, the Hindu population is projected to rise by 34 percent worldwide, from a little over 1 billion to nearly 1.4 billion by 2050.

By 2050, Hindus will be third, making up 14.9 percent of the world’s total population, followed by people who do not affiliate with any religion, accounting for 13.2 percent, the report said. Muslims are projected to grow faster than the world’s overall population and that Hindus and Christians are projected to roughly keep pace with worldwide population growth, the report had said.

The report had predicted that by 2050, there will be near parity between Muslims (2.8 billion, or 30 percent of the population) and Christians (2.9 billion, or 31 percent), possibly for the first time in history.

There were 1.6 billion Muslims in 2010, compared to 2.17 billion Christians.

In North America, the Hindu share of the population is expected to nearly double in the decades ahead, from 0.7 percent in 2010 to 1.3 percent in 2050, when migration is included in the projection models. Without migration, the Hindu share of the region’s population would remain the same.

With inputs from PTI