Islam continues its growth and could become the largest religion by 2050, surpassing Christianity
By the middle of the 21st century, it will already surpass Christianity in believers and will represent 31.1% of the world's population. This is due to the faster growth of the Muslim population than the Christian population, driven by factors such as higher birth rates in Muslim-majority countries.
The current Muslim population is estimated to be around 1.9 billion, representing approximately 25% of the world's population, and could reach and surpass the Christian population by 2050, according to all prospective reports. By that year, Islam could be professed by 3 billion believers and would become the world's largest religion for the first time in modern history.
Muslims would then represent 31.1% of the world's population, 6 percentage points more than today, while Christians, who today number 2.4 billion (a figure that includes Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and other branches of Christianity), would see their presence decrease in relative terms.
Within 35 years, Africa will become the geographical area with the largest number of Muslims on the planet, surpassing even the Arab world, which until now has been the undisputed bastion of the religion of the Prophet Muhammad.
The rapid expansion of Islam is not due to a phenomenon of rapid conversion, but to pure and simple vegetative growth. Islamic societies are the youngest on the planet and enjoy a particularly high fertility rate, far higher than that of Christians, Hindus, Jews, and non-believers.
To begin with, the average age of the Muslim population is 24, while that of Hindus is 27 and that of Christians is already 30. Other religions exceed this threshold. Muslim women have an average of 2.9 children, while other religions combined barely reach 2.2. Therefore, the birth rate drives the Islamic religion with considerable demographic energy, and this will remain a major force in the coming decades.
Africa will be the driving force behind the sustained rise of Islam throughout this century. Today, it has the highest fertility rates on the planet. Each African woman gives birth to 4.7 children, while in Europe, for example, the rate is only 1.6.
Forty-two percent of the African population is Muslim, compared to 49% of Christians. Animists currently represent only 8% of the population. The majority of African Muslims live in the northern half of the continent, especially in the Arab countries bordering the Mediterranean. Somalia, Niger, Mauritania, and Senegal have a Muslim population of over 95%. Africa currently has 422 million Muslims. Christianity has 640 million, the majority of whom are Protestants.
The world's population is expected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.4 billion in 2100, according to the UN. This growth is due to increased life expectancy and declining fertility rates.
Muslim-majority countries maintain high fertility rates, although they are clearly lower than those in Africa. Sudan (4.29), Iraq (3.54), Pakistan (3.39), and Egypt (3.34) lead the natural growth in the Islamic region. The Muslim-majority countries with the lowest birth rates are the United Arab Emirates (1.37), Lebanon (2.06), Iran (2.14), Tunisia (2.15), Libya (2.17), and Saudi Arabia (2.24). Latin America (2.01) also has low fertility rates.
Currently, more than a third of the Muslim population lives in the Middle East, the Maghreb, and sub-Saharan Africa, in areas with high population growth rates. Even in this geographical context, Islamic communities have higher birth rates than other ethnic and religious groups. It should be noted that religious conversion in Muslim-majority countries is extremely low, as apostasy is generally punishable by law. However, in Christian-majority countries, there is a steady trend toward nonbelievers or agnostics.
The United States, Brazil, and Mexico are the three countries in the world with the largest number of Christians, while Hinduism is the third largest religion on the planet, with 1.2 billion believers. They represent 15.2% of the world's population. The Jewish community represents only 0.2% of the population, and four-fifths of it is located in the United States and Israel.
The non-believer population is growing significantly and steadily in developed countries, particularly those with the lowest birth rates. In China, nearly 80% of the population identifies as agnostic or atheist. In Europe, there are countries with a rate of nonbelievers exceeding 70%, such as the Czech Republic. In Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark, there will soon be as many nonbelievers as religious people.
In relative terms, therefore, the religious population gains more followers each year than the non-religious population, whose birth rates are lower. A report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) notes a meager annual growth in atheism (0.22%), almost a percentage point less than the religion of the cross (1.17%) and Hinduism (1.21%). This survey also places Islam as the most thriving faith, with an annual increase of 1.93%.
Protestants and Evangelicals (2%) have experienced a greater increase than Catholics, as observed over the past 20 years. Africa (2.7%), Asia (1.5%), and Latin America (1%) are the areas with the greatest development of Christianity, according to data published by the aforementioned study. North America (0.2%) and, especially, Europe (0.06%) are experiencing a drastic decline in what remains the world's majority religion. In fact, in the Old Continent alone, the Christian death rate was nearly 6 million higher than the birth rate between 2010 and 2015.
In Western Europe and North America, religion is experiencing a persistent decline, while in the rest of the world its influence remains high. Today, the non-religious population represents 16% of the world's total, but its fertility rate is very low. Only 10% of those born between 2010 and 2015 were to mothers with no religious affiliation.