In the next half century or so, Christianity’s long reign as the world’s largest religion may come to an end, according to a just-released report that builds on Pew Research Center’s original population growth projections for religious groups. Indeed, Muslims will grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2015 and 2060 and, in the second half of this century, will likely surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group. While the world’s population is projected to grow 32% in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70% – from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. In 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the global population. Forty-five years later, they are expected to make up more than three-in-ten of the world’s people (31.1%). The main reasons for Islam’s growth ultimately involve simple demographics. To begin with, Muslims have more children than members of the seven other major religious groups analyzed in the study. Muslim women have an average of 2.9 children, significantly above the next-highest group (Christians at 2.6) and the average of all non-Muslims (2.2). In all major regions where there is a sizable Muslim population, Muslim fertility exceeds non-Muslim fertility. The growth of the Muslim population also is helped by the fact that Muslims have the youngest median age (24 in 2015) of all major religious groups, more than seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims (32).
A larger share of Muslims will soon be at the point in their lives when people begin having children. This, combined with high fertility rates, will accelerate Muslim population growth.More than a third of Muslims are concentrated in Africa and the Middle East, regions that are projected to have the biggest population increases. But even within these high-growth regions – as well as others – Muslims are projected to grow faster than members of other groups. For example, Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, on average, are younger and have higher fertility than the overall population of the region. In fact, Muslims are expected to grow as a percentage of every region except Latin America and the Caribbean, where relatively few Muslims live. The same dynamics hold true in many countries where Muslims live in large numbers alongside other religious groups. For example, India’s number of Muslims is growing at a faster rate than the country’s majority Hindu population, and is projected to rise from 14.9% of India’s 2015 population to 19.4% (or 333 million people) in 2060. And while there were similar numbers of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria as of 2015, Muslims have higher fertility there and are expected to grow to a solid majority of Nigeria’s population (60.5%) in 2060. Meanwhile, religious switching – which is expected to hinder the growth of Christians by an estimated 72 million between 2015 and 2060 – is not expected to have a negative net impact on Muslim population growth. It is often assumed that the God of Islam is a fierce war-like deity, in contrast to the God of Christianity and Judaism, who is one of love and mercy. The founder of Islam, Muhammad, saw himself as the last in a line of prophets that reached back through Jesus to Moses, beyond him to Abraham and as far back as Noah.
According to the Quran, God (known as Allah) revealed to Muhammad: the Book with the truth [the Quran], confirming what was before it, and [before He sent down the Quran] He sent down the Torah of Moses and the Gospel of Jesus… as a guidance for the people. Thus, since Muhammad inherited the Jewish and Christian understandings of God, it is not surprising that the God of Muhammad, Jesus and Moses has a similarly complex and ambivalent character – a blend of benevolence and compassion, combined with wrath and anger. If you were obedient to his commands, he could be all sweetness and light. But you didn’t want to get on his wrong side. To those who turned to him in repentance, this God was (above all else) merciful and all-forgiving. But those who failed to find the path or, having found it failed to follow it, would know his judgment and wrath. Mohammed receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. Miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami’ al-Tawarikh by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 CE. Wikimedia images For Jews, God was fully revealed in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament). The God of the Old Testament was both good and evil. He went way beyond the good when he told Abraham to offer his son to God as a burnt sacrifice. He was a warrior God who murdered the firstborn of Egypt and drowned the army of Pharaoh. He approved Elijah’s slaughter of the 450 prophets of the ancient Canaanite God Baal. Yet he was also a compassionate and loving God, one who in the well-known words of Psalm 23 in the Book of Psalms was a shepherd whose goodness and mercy supported his followers all the days of their lives. He loved Israel like a father loves his son.
Further reading: We don’t know if God exists but we should keep asking
Hans Meling, Christ Giving His Blessing (1478). Wikimedia images Jesus in the four Gospels in the New Testament had an impecable character. On the one hand, Jesus spoke of a personal God, referring to him as “Father” in the prayer that he gave to his disciples. Yet, behind this God of tenderness and love, there remained a God of justice. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus preached doom and gloom. He was offering Israel its last chance and God would be merciless to those who failed to heed his message. God would come in judgment at the end of history. All would then be resurrected. The fortunate few would receive eternal happiness, but the wicked majority would be cast into the eternal fires of hell. At the end of the world, God would act as a God of justice. All the dead would be resurrected to receive God’s judgment. God would then reward or punish each person in the gardens of paradise or the fires of hell according to the glorious gospel of Christ.
Further reading: Paris attacks – why Islam and Christianity are twin religions of war and peace
The key to salvation to the muslimwas above all surrender (“islam” in Arabic) to God, obedience to his commands as revealed in the Quran and allegiance to his messenger Muhammad. Like the God of Moses, Allah was a lawmaker. The Quran provided (often varied) guidance to the believing community in matters of marriage and family law, women, inheritance, food and drink, worship and purity, warfare, punishments for adultery and false accusations of adultery, alcohol and theft. In short, it provided the foundation of what was later to be much elaborated in sharia law. Yet, in spite of this, most believe that their religion contains the full and final revelation of the same God,but is this true?. Here is the origin of their unity. Here also lies the cause of their division. For this belief in the truth of one religion and the falsity of the others leads to inevitable conflict between the believer and the unbeliever, the chosen and the rejected, the saved and the damned. Here lie the seeds of intolerance and violence. So the God of Muhammad, the God of Moses, divides as much as he unites, a cause of strife both between and within these religions. Islam is the only religion growing faster than the world's population, and it will be the largest in the world by 2070, research has found. US-based Pew Research Centre analysed demographic change among the world's major religions and found that the world's population of Muslims will grow by 73 per cent between 2010 and 2050, compared to 35 per cent for Christians, the next fastest-growing faith. The world's population will grow by 37 per cent over the same period. If those rates of growth continue past 2050, Muslims will outnumber Christians by 2070, the report found.
It also says that Muslims will make up 10 per cent of Europe's population. In 2010 there were 1.6bn Muslims in the world, and 2.17bn Christians. By 2050, there will be 2.76bn Muslims and 2.92bn Christians - and if both religions continue at that rate of growth, Islam will have a larger number of followers than Christianity by 2070. Atheists, agnostics and non-religious people will decline from 16.4 per cent of the world's population to 13.2 per cent by 2050, the report added, despite growing in Europe and North America. The changes are partly due to the various fertility rates each religion has. Muslims have the highest, at 3.1 children per woman, followed by Christians, at 2.7. Islam also has a much younger follower-base than other religions, meaning believers still have childbearing years ahead. 34 per cent are aged under 15, compared to a global average of 27 per cent. Christianity is also likely to suffer as more converts leave to become non-religious or to join other faiths, the report predicted. Around 40 million people are projected to switch into Christianity globally, while 106 million are predicted to leave. The report also summarises findings from a survey last year into European attitudes towards Muslims. "Majorities in Hungary, Italy, Poland and Greece say they view Muslims unfavorably, while negative attitudes toward Muslims are much less common in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Northern and Western Europe. "People who place themselves on the Right side of the ideological scale are much more likely than those on the Left to see Muslims negatively," it said. What is my conclusion, you have a choice to preach the gospel to the unsaved millions, knowing that he is able to save to the uttermost, those that come to God by Him.So even if they ''stop'' being Christians they can't stop.