Islam is the Fastest Growing Religion in the World, Here's Why

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A new study from the Pew Research Center found that Islam experienced the most significant growth among all major religions between 2010 and 2020, making it the world’s fastest-growing religion, Middle East Eye reports.

The Pew Global Religious Landscape study attributes this increase primarily to natural demographic factors, such as higher birth rates and younger average ages among Muslims, rather than to conversion.

The report notes that “Muslims are having more children and at younger ages than members of other major religions.” For the period 2015-2020, the average Muslim woman was estimated to have 2.9 children, compared to 2.2 children for non-Muslim women.

Global Religious Shifts

The study examined changes in the global religious composition over a decade and found that Christianity remains the world’s largest religion, with 2.3 billion adherents. However, the gap between Christians and Muslims is narrowing. This is because the number of Muslims has grown by almost 350 million since 2010 – almost three times as much as Christians and more than all other religions combined. Muslims now number about two billion, or about a quarter of the world’s population.

Meanwhile, the number of religiously unaffiliated people – sometimes called “nones” – has also grown substantially, increasing by 270 million since 2010. This group, along with Muslims, is the only major category to grow as a share of the world’s population over that period. Hinduism, the world’s third-largest religion, grew by 126 million people, but its share of the population was unchanged.

Other religions, including Sikhism and the Baha’i Faith, together make up about 2.2 per cent of the global population, while Judaism grew by almost a million people and now represents about 0.2 per cent of the world’s population. Buddhism was the only major religion to decline, with 18.6 million fewer adherents in 2020 than in 2010, down from five percent to four percent of the global population.

Regional Patterns and Religious Shifts

Most of the Muslim population growth occurred in countries where Muslims were already the majority. The largest relative increases were seen in Kazakhstan, Benin, and Lebanon, while Oman and Tanzania experienced declines in Muslim numbers.

In contrast, the religiously unaffiliated population grew most rapidly in the United States, nearly doubling over a decade. The largest share of the unaffiliated is in China, which has 1.3 billion people who are not affiliated with any religion.

Christianity remained the majority religion in 60 percent of the countries and territories surveyed, but it declined by at least five percent in 40 countries, with significant increases in only one country. The study attributes this decline to religious conversion: for every adult who converted to Christianity, three left the religion between 2010 and 2020.

The opposite trend was seen for the religiously unaffiliated, where for every adult who left a religion, three joined. Both Buddhism and Hinduism also saw an increase in the number of adults leaving the religion than joining. Islam was the only major religion with a net gain in conversion, as more adults joined than left.

Demographic Drivers of Growth

The study highlights that Islam’s rapid growth is driven more by demographic factors than conversion. Muslim populations tend to be younger and have higher fertility rates than other religious groups. These factors mean that more Muslims are entering their childbearing years, accelerating population growth.

This trend is expected to continue, with the Muslim population projected to continue to grow in the coming decades. Pew’s analysis suggests that conversion has had a small net impact on the size of the global Muslim population.

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