- Islam is the fastest-growing religion, adding 347 million followers from 2010 to 2020.
- Christianity remains the largest religious group, but falls second in the fastest-growing religion list.
- Nones, or religiously unaffiliated individuals, grew by 270 million to 1.9 billion.
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, with the Muslim population growing by 347 million in 10 years between 2010 and 2020, a report by the Pew Research Center said. According to the report, Christianity is the second fastest rising religion, followed by 'nones' or people with no religious affiliation. Hindus place fourth in the world population.
The Pew's 'Global Religious Landscape' report, published on June 9, reveals how population growth has influenced the global religious landscape. It mainly focuses on seven categories: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, people who belong to other religions, and those who are religiously unaffiliated.
The report says the rise in the number of Muslims is more than all other religions combined, and the shares of the Muslim population globally rose by 1.8 percentage points to 25.6 per cent.
Christianity, the world's biggest religious group, comes second.
The number of Christians rose by 122 million, reaching 2.3 billion. However, as a share of the world's population, they fell 1.8 percentage points to 28.8 per cent - placing second to Islam, the report says. This is primarily due to the growth of the non-Christian population and those who left the faith. Most former Christians no longer identify with any religion, but some now identify with a different religion, the survey reveals.
The decline in Christianity has been recorded in Europe, North America, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, according to Pew.
'Nones' rank as the third-largest growing group, with the number of religiously unaffiliated people rising by 270 million to 1.9 billion. The share of 'nones' in the world population has climbed nearly a full percentage point to 24.2 per cent.
Hindus, according to the report, grew at about the same rate as the world's overall population. The religion stands fourth in the fastest-growing list. The report says the number of Hindus has risen by 126 million, reaching 1.2 billion. As a proportion of the global population, Hindus hold steady at 14.9 per cent - a slight drop as compared to 2010 (15 per cent).
The Jewish population grew by around six per cent in those 10 years - from 14 million to 15 million people, the report said. As of 2020, 45.9 per cent of Jews lived in Israel - the highest Jewish population in any country. This was followed by 41.2 per cent in North America.
According to the report, Buddhists are the only major religious group that had fewer numbers in 2020 than a decade earlier. The number of Buddhists in the world dropped by 0.8 per cent.
The age profile
The study claims that in 2020, Muslims had the highest proportion of children in their population (33 per cent of all Muslims worldwide are under 15). The youthfulness of Muslims is tied to the fact that nearly four-in-ten of the world's Muslims live in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region - places with relatively young populations, it says.
Jews and Buddhists have the highest proportion of older adults - 36 per cent in each group are ages 50 and older.
Christians have a large presence in many regions, from the most youthful in sub-Saharan Africa to the least in Europe. Hindus have a larger population between the ages of 15 to 49 (55 per cent), followed by youngsters of 33 per cent.
