Muslims to be largest religious group in Asia Pacific by 2050

Muslim populations are expected to grow in absolute number in all regions of the world between 2010 and 2050, says the Future of World Religions project from Pew Research. In the Asia-Pacific region, for instance, the Muslim population is expected to reach nearly 1.5 billion by 2050, up from roughly 1 billion in 2010. The number of Muslims in the Middle East-North Africa region is expected to increase from about 300 million in 2010 to more than 550 million in 2050.

The Asia-Pacific region is expected to remain the home of a majority of the world’s Muslims. However, the share of the global Muslim population living in several Asian countries with large Muslim populations (such as Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh) is anticipated to decline between 2010 and 2050. While 62% of the world’s Muslims lived in Asia and the Pacific in 2010, 53% are projected to live in the region in 2050. Although a smaller share of the world’s Muslims are projected to live in the Asia-Pacific region in 2050 compared with 2010, the share of the region’s population that is Muslim is expected to grow from 24% in 2010 to nearly 30% in 2050. In fact, Muslims are projected to surpass Hindus and become the largest religious group in the Asia-Pacific region by 2050.

The Middle East-North Africa region is predominantly Muslim, but as of 2010, only one-in-five Muslims lived in that part of the world. By 2050, about the same share of the global Muslim population is expected to live in the Middle East and North Africa (20%). With the bulk of the Middle East-North Africa region’s population being Muslim, the overall growth for Muslims there (74%) is expected to be about the same as the region overall (73%).

Muslims made up 14% of India’s population in 2010; they are expected to rise to 18% in 2050. Less than half of Nigeria’s population (49%) was Muslim in 2010, but Muslims are expected to make up a majority of the population (59%) in 2050.

As of 2010, Indonesia had the largest number of Muslims (about 209 million Muslims, or about 13% of the world’s Muslims), followed by India (176 million, or about 11%), Pakistan (167 million, 10%) and Bangladesh (134 million, 8%). Nigeria, Egypt, Iran and Turkey each also had more than 70 million Muslims in 2010.

With the exception of India, where Muslims are a minority religious group, and Nigeria, where Muslims made up nearly half the population, the other eight countries on the list each had a large Muslim majority in 2010.

India is projected to have the world’s largest Muslim population in 2050 (311 million), while Pakistan is expected to have the second-most Muslims (273 million). Indonesia – the country with the largest number of Muslims in 2010 – is expected to fall to third place by 2050, with 257 million Muslims. Nigeria is forecast to rank fourth, with about 231 million Muslims at mid-century.

By 2050, Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to join the list of countries with the 10 largest Muslim populations. All told, more than six-in-ten of the world’s Muslims (62%) are projected to live in the 10 countries with the most Muslims in 2050, slightly smaller than the share of the world’s Muslims that lived in the top 10 countries in 2010 (66%).

posted from Bloggeroid

Median age of Muslims stands at 23 against world average of 28

A study titled The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050 from Pew Research has shown that the Muslim population is relatively young compared to other religious groups studied.

Globally, Muslims were younger (median age of 23) than the overall population (median age of 28) as of 2010. Indeed, of all the religious groups included in this study, Muslims had the youngest median age as of 2010. The percentage of the population younger than 15 is another indication of the relative youth of a population. In 2010, 34% of the global Muslim population was under age 15, compared with 27% of the overall world population.

In the Asia-Pacific region, where about six-in-ten of the world’s Muslims live, the median age of Muslims (24) was five years younger than the median age of the region as a whole (29).

posted from Bloggeroid

Islam to be fastest growing religion over next 40 years

Pew Research has found that the religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well as by people switching faiths.

Source: Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, Worldwide Muslim Population 2010

The thinktank forecasts that Christians will continue to make up the largest religious group over the next four decades, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion. According to the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, there were 4,054,990,000 people of all ages living in Asia and the Pacific in 2010, of which 24% are Muslims.  There were 341,020,000 people of all ages living in the Middle East and North Africa during the same period, of which more than nine in 10 were Muslims (93%). If current demographic trends continue, Pew says that by 2050 the number of Muslims around the world (2.8 billion, or 30% of the population) will nearly equal the number of Christians (2.9 billion, or 31%), possibly for the first time in history.

Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3.1 children per woman – well above replacement level of 2.1, which is the minimum typically needed to maintain a stable population*. 

Another important determinant of growth is the current age distribution of each religious group – whether its adherents are predominantly young, with their prime childbearing years still ahead, or older and largely past their childbearing years.

In 2010, more than a quarter of the world’s total population (27%) was under the age of 15. But 34% of Muslims were younger than 15. This bulging youth population is among the reasons that Muslims are projected to grow faster than the world’s overall population. The projections also find that by 2050 - if current trends continue - India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.

The predictions are part of global religious trends highlighted in new demographic projections by the Pew Research Center. The research, report and an interactive website, www.globalreligiousfutures.org, are part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, a multi-year effort jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation to analyse religious change and its impact on societies around the world.

The new report on the demographic projections explores expected changes from 2010 to 2050 in the size and geographic distribution of eight major religious groups: Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, adherents of folk religions, adherents of other religions and the unaffiliated.

While many people have offered predictions about the future of religion, these are the first formal demographic projections using data on age, fertility, mortality, migration and religious switching for multiple religious groups around the world.

In addition to making projections at the global level, the report projects religious change in nearly 200 countries and territories and looks at how religious composition is likely to change from 2010 to 2050 in six different regions of the world.

Data from the report can be explored online and custom visualisations can be created at www.globalreligiousfutures.org.

The full report, The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050, is available on the website of the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life project.

*The standard measure of fertility in this report is the Total Fertility Rate. In countries with low infant and child mortality rates, a Total Fertility Rate close to 2.1 children per woman is sufficient for each generation to replace itself. Replacement-level fertility is higher in countries with elevated mortality rates. For more information on how fertility shapes population growth,  click here.

posted from Bloggeroid

About 10% of the world's flags carry Islamic symbols

Source: Pew Research website.

A third of the world’s 196 countries have national flags with religious symbols on them, according to a new Pew Research analysis. According to Pew Research, there are 64 countries in this category, with about half including Christian symbols (48%) and about a third including Islamic religious symbols (33%).

Islamic symbols are found on the flags of 21 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East and North Africa, the thinktank said. The national flag of Bahrain features five white triangles, symbolising the Five Pillars of Islam, Pew noted. Turkey, Brunei and Uzbekistan are some of the other countries that include an Islamic star and crescent on their national flag.

Although Singapore has a crescent and stars on its flag, they do not have religious significance, Pew added. The crescent moon “represents a young nation on the ascendant, and the five stars depict Singapore’s ideals of democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality,” according to the Singapore government.

Six countries house more than half of the Muslims around the world

Source: Pew Research website.

Muslims are concentrated in the Asia Pacific region, where six-in-ten (62%) of all Muslims reside, says 2012 figures from Pew Research. Against the total population by region, about one-in-four people (24%) are Muslims. The Middle East-North Africa region is almost wholly Muslim (93%), but represent only about 20% of the world’s Muslims.

The largest share of Muslims live in Indonesia (13%), followed by India (11%), Pakistan (11%), Bangladesh (8%), Nigeria (5%), Egypt (5%), Iran (5%), Turkey (5%), Algeria (2%) and Morocco (2%)*.

In August 2014, Pew Research updated its figures in a 'Fact Tank' about where people from different religions are clustered around the world. The top six nations where Muslims live together account for 53% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, the consultancy said, accounting for 30% of the world’s population.

Pew Research also created an infographic in 2013 about the world's Muslims which can be viewed here.

*The difference between the rankings in this report, which states that India comes before Pakistan, and previous reports, where Pakistan was ranked larger than India, is primarily due to a downward revision by the United Nations Population Division of its estimate of the size of Pakistan’s total population and an upward revision of the UN estimate of India’s total population.