Worldwide impact assessed
The world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35 per cent in the next 20 years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030, according to a new, comprehensive report released today by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life on the size, distribution and growth of the Muslim population.
The study is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, an effort funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation to analyse religious change and its impact on societies around the world.
Over the next two decades, the worldwide Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population – an average annual growth rate of 1.5 per cent for Muslims compared with 0.7 per cent for non-Muslims.
If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4 per cent of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4 per cent of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.
However, while the global Muslim population is predicted to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, it is also expected to grow at a slower pace in the next 20 years than it did in the previous two decades.
From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2 per cent; for the period from 2010 to 2030, the rate of growth is projected to be 1.5 per cent.
‘The Future of the Global Muslim Population’ seeks to provide up-to-date estimates of the number of Muslims around the world in 2010 and to project the growth of the Muslim population from 2010 to 2030.
The report’s projections are based both on past demographic trends and on assumptions about how these trends will play out in future years. For summary see:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14027
The full report, which includes an executive summary, interactive maps and sortable data tables, is available on the Pew Forum’s website here: