Islam Fastest-Growing Religion In World: 6 Key Takeaways From New Pew Study

News18

11-06-2025

Last Updated:
Islam is fastest-growing religion in world, with their population increasing by 347 million between 2010 and 2020, new Pew study revealed. It has listed data on other faiths also.
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and the world's Muslim population grew by 347 million over the last 10 years, while Hindus are the fourth largest group with 14.9% of the global population, according to a new Pew Research Center study.
Pew's Global Religious Landscape study, released on June 9, measured the evolution of the global religious population between 2010 and 2020. The new study reveals how population growth influenced the global religious landscape. This year's edition is the second report of religious groups, which was started in 2010.
Conrad Hackett, a senior demographer at Pew Research Center, said that Muslims are having children at a greater rate than people in the community are dying.
'Very little of the change in Muslim population size is a result of people becoming Muslim as adults or leaving Islam as adults," he said.
Muslims are primarily concentrated in regions witnessing high population growth, such as the Middle East-North Africa region. They represent 94.2% of the population in this region, whereas they are 33% in sub-Saharan Africa. Their number grew in large numbers in the Asia Pacific region, where their percentage increased by 16.2% between 2010 and 2020.
Christianity Grows But Declines Overall In World Population: The survey showed that Christianity grew by 122 million people during that period; however, it declined as an overall slice of the global population. Despite the dip, Christianity remains the world's largest religion, with 2.3 billion people following the religion, which constitutes 29% of the world's population.
Christianity declined by 1.8%, primarily due to growth among the non-Christian population. The decline was witnessed in Europe, North America, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, the survey showed.
It remains the majority faith in the world, except for the Asia-Pacific and Middle East-North Africa regions.
Religiously Unaffiliated People: After Islam and Christianity, the third largest number of people in the world are those unaffiliated with any religion, with 24.2% of the world's population following this trend, according to the survey.
Those people who left religion have severely impacted the proportion of the world's Christian population.
Buddhists Impacted By Religious Unaffiliation: Buddhists are another group affected by people moving away from religion in East Asia. Between 2010 and 2020, more people left Buddhism than joined it. It was the only religion in the region that had fewer followers in 2020 than in 2010, with a drop of 19 million people, according to the study.
However, the study also says that these numbers may not show the full picture. That's because many people who follow Buddhist traditions or practices may not officially identify as Buddhist.
Hindu Population Fourth Largest In World: According to the study, Hindus represent 14.9% of the world's population and are the fourth largest group in the world. The majority of Hindus reside in India (95%), and their number increased between 2010 and 2020 by 62% in the Middle East-North Africa region, primarily because of migration.
In North America, the population of Hindus grew by 55%.