Islam to be the biggest religion in the world by 2070: study

Islam is the world’s second-largest religion, as well as the fastest growing religion in the world, said a new study by Pew Research Centre.

According to the report, there are 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, the report adds.

This is because the Muslim population is growing faster than any major religious group.

Around the world, each Muslim woman has an average of 3.1 childrean, compared with 2.3 for other religions combined. Islam also has the youngest worshippers –  the median age was 23 in 2010.

Attitudes to Islam vary across Europe, the same study found, with the UK among the most favourable to Muslims in their country.

Indonesia is currently the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, but Pew Research Center projects that India will have that distinction by the year 2050 (while remaining a majority-Hindu country), with more than 300 million Muslims.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2017 asked Americans to rate members of nine religious groups on a “feeling thermometer” from 0 to 100, where 0 reflects the coldest, most negative possible rating and 100 the warmest, most positive rating. Overall, Americans gave Muslims an average rating of 48 degrees, similar to atheists (50).

Americans view more warmly the seven other religious groups mentioned in the survey (Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Mormons). But views toward Muslims (as well as several of the other groups) are now warmer than they were a few years ago; in 2014, U.S. adults gave Muslims an average rating of 40 degrees in a similar survey.