Islam on track to overtake Christianity by 2050!

WASHINGTON — The number of Muslims worldwide is expected to grow by 73 per cent to pull level with Christian populations by 2050, according to researchers from the Pew Research Centre, a Washington-based social science think tank.
One-third of the world’s current Muslims are under 15 and their communities have high fertility rates, Conrad Hackett, lead researcher on the report, said in Washington.
The projections are based on census data factoring in age of populations, fertility rates and migration patterns. It is estimated that by 2050, Christians and Muslims will make up nearly equal shares of the world’s population — 2.9 billion and 2.7 billion respectively.
Christian populations are expected to grow predominately in Africa.
The centre’s data predicts that four out of every 10 of the world’s Christians will live in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050.
In Nigeria, the number of Muslims and Christians was nearly equal in 2010, but it is expected that by 2050, Muslims will account for almost 60 per cent of Nigeria’s population.
India will continue to experience exceptional population growth in coming decades and will have more Muslims than any other country, Hackett said. But the country will remain overwhelmingly Hindu. Eighty per cent of India’s population of 1.2 billion is Hindu.
The religiously unaffiliated, though growing in number in countries like the United States, will decline globally because of low birth rates among the group.
France, New Zealand and the Netherlands are countries where the majority by 2050 is expected to have no religious affiliation. — dpa

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