islam is the best religion in the world essay

Berkley Center

Islam as a political force: more than belief.

By: Jocelyne Cesari

February 10, 2017

• The Nationalization of Islamic Institutions and clerics
• The redefinition and reduction of Sharia as well as inclusion of Islamic references into secular legal systems (mostly family Law)
• The integration of Islamic teaching in public education as part of civic education

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Mystical Meditations and Other Miscellaneous Musings

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Before taking this course, my knowledge of Islam had primarily been informed by the mainstream media. Unfortunately for the probable thousands of Americans who shared this in common with me, there are so many misconceived notions of Islam depicted by these media outlets that may never be rectified unless an active search for truth is realized. Much of what the younger generations have seen in their lifetimes regarding Islam has been shrouded by dialogues of terrorism, war, and fear. It is a very instinctually human phenomenon to form an opinion and stick to it for pride or vanity’s sake. These opinions once formed are rarely able to be transformed, unless genuine open-mindedness and empathy are present. But fortunately for me, I came into Harvard almost entirely set on concentrating in the Comparative Study of Religion. Coming from a tremendously devout Catholic family, I had attended parochial school my whole life. Though I fell in love with my Catholic faith from a young age, I knew that reserving my religious studies to Catholic theology alone was detrimental not only to my conception of Catholicism, but to my conception of religion as a whole. Taking a class on Islam was a top priority on my list as I was aware of my own ignorance of both the religion and the culture. But people are not stringently bound by their ignorance that perpetuates destructive stereotypes. Misconceptions and misunderstandings can be easily cured with knowledge. And that is something I learned this semester.

In his book Infidel of Love, Professor Asani says: “It is one of the great ironies of our times that peoples from different religious, cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds are in closer contact with each other than ever before, yet this closeness has not resulted in better understanding and appreciation for difference. Rather, our world is marked with greater misunderstandings and misconceptions, resulting in ever-escalating levels of tensions between cultures and nations.” (page 1) These tensions that arise between cultures hardly exist on account of reasons other than ignorance. Nobody could ever come to truly know or appreciate another person, community, or culture without truly understanding that person, community, or culture. Learning about Islam therefore becomes an undertaking that requires the study of the historic, social, and political contexts that envelop the religion, before diving into the study of the modern-day conflicts existing within and surrounding some Muslim nations. Throughout this class, not only did we look at these political and historical contexts, but we also, more uniquely, examined Islam through the lenses of art, literature, poetry, and music. Peering into our subject through these aesthetic lenses provided an experience unlike any other approach to learning I’ve yet encountered. I hope the viewer will catch a glimpse of this from my blog posts.

In this blog, I present my own personal interpretations of and responses to Islamic art, literature, poetry, architecture, music, and culture. Each entry presents a reflection of the corresponding lecture material or weekly readings beginning with Week Two’s “Constructions of Islam” and ending with Week Twelve’s reading of Persepolis and Sultana’s Dream. As I mention in some of my blog posts, my spiritual life was fairly established before taking this class; but with each coming week and its accompanying lectures, my eyes were opened to so many new possibilities of approaching faith and life as a whole. Though I came to this class with a limited knowledge of Islam and, moreover, a mistaken belief that the religion along with all it promoted had no place alongside my own convictions, I am now ending the semester, delighted to have been proven wrong. My deepest hope is that someone stumbling upon this assortment of “mystical meditations and other miscellaneous musings” might recognize the collective revelations that have allowed me modest glimpses into enlightenment over these past 13 weeks, and even better, might also be inspired to think differently themselves.

In my first blog post, “Constructions of Islam,” I focus on the distinction between the terms “Muslim” and “muslim.” This was perhaps one of my favorite units in the semester because it set the stage so perfectly for all of the other misconceptions I was subconsciously harboring that would be broken throughout the rest of the course. I think that the aforementioned villainization of Muslims that has been presented in the media post 9/11 has created a false notion that at the core of Islam, exists a claim to salvation that precludes any non-Muslim from God’s mercy. But, something I learned in week two, primarily through Professor Asani’s second chapter of Infidel of Love, is that True Islam values all human life and recognizes the fact that fundamental human rights are not only universal, but that belief in this is a principal tenet of the religion. Contrary to the misconception, True Islam emphasizes that inherent dignity of humanity is derived from the same creator and therefore, rejects any possibility of ethnic, racial, or religious supremacy. As a recently declared concentrator in the study of comparative religion, I find this pluralistic message all the more critical for the development and fostering of understanding. I am a firm believer that we should not be content with the end-goal of tolerance. Tolerance implies a certain degree of complacency towards a subject, when what we should be striving for is appreciation for difference, and an eagerness to learn more about viewpoints countering our own.

My second blog post turns towards a more aesthetic side of Islam. In week six, we discussed mosque architecture and heard from two guest lecturers who spoke about the fluidity and multidimensional nature of Islamic art. In Ismail R. Al-Faruqi’s Misconceptions on the Nature of Islamic Art, he prefaces the text by noting that “the Western scholars of Islamic art…have failed in the supreme effort of understanding the spirit of that art, of discerning and analyzing its Islamicness…they sought to bend Islamic art to its categories.” (page 29) This recurring phenomenon of Western societies misappropriating cultures outside of their own is one of, if not the singular, leading cause of the culture clash that Professor Asani references in the first excerpt from Infidel of Love. Not only are misrepresentations of these cultures counterproductive to the quest for understanding, they are simply erroneous and lazy assessments in which these Western scholars attempt to fit every other culture and society into the confines of their own constructed conventions. What I found so beautiful and unique about Islamic art is that despite the wildly varied modes of interpretation and expression, all “derive their theological aesthetic from the same principle, namely, tawhid, the acknowledgement and assertion of God’s uncompromised unity and transcendence.” (Rendard, Seven Doors to Islam , page 128) The artistic liberty afforded by this principle combined with the lack of a rigid architectural template for masjids leads to endless creative possibilities. I chose to follow up Week Two’s blog with Week Six because I think the plurality message tied into the first blog also comes through in this visual project. The incorporation of three cultures into the Spanish mosque architecture is a prime example of the productive relationship that can exist between nations, and the beauty that arises as a result of their cooperative effort.

The blog inspired by Week Five deals with the importance of historical contexts and the role history plays in shaping a culture. The relationship between the father, the son, and the grandfather in Elie Wiesel’s quote is one that helped me understand the importance of the Ta’ziyeh much more clearly. So much of history relies on story-telling and the passing on of customs, but many people undervalue the importance of preserving tradition. And yet, tradition is what so often lies at the heart of religion and group identity as a whole. Without tradition and a rich history, meaning can be entirely dissolved from a culture. I have seen firsthand the essentiality of this preservation within my own faith. It’s easy to question the Truths within your religion when you realize that you only subscribe to it because of your parents, and their parents, and their parents’ parents. But once you realize the weight of tradition, you grow to appreciate the history behind your own roots, and suddenly, there is so much more meaning underlying your convictions.

Transitioning into the second half of the course, my fourth blog revolves around Week Nine’s subject of Islamic poetry. This type of faith expression and the difficulty discussed in lecture of confining a spiritual experience to fit within the parameters of language is one that I was easily able to relate to. Throughout my life, I have had innumerable encounters with areligious people that lack even the slightest trace of faith. Trying to verbalize your own faith experience is almost an impossible feat, and anyone who has been in a similar place could likely attest. When the Transcendent is so infinitely above the worldly realm that we exist in, it would be a futile task to limit an encounter with It to time or space. This poem grapples with my inner battle between constantly seeking social validation and ultimately realizing that “the one who made the stars, for my heart freely yearns.” This sense of security of self that I find within my own faith is something that people in my life who have never experienced this may never understand. My sense of self is secure because it rests in the opinion of my creator, and I have realized more and more throughout this course that I do not stand alone in this conviction. I am convinced that the bond which exists between people of faith is unlike any other interpersonal connection that human beings could share. Not only does it transcend language and time, it automatically places you on an elevated state of understanding.

This sense of unity among the community of believers is exactly why I chose to shift into Week Ten’s Conference of the Birds. In choosing seven birds and seven languages denoting “God,” I hoped to encompass this theme that, despite possessing impossible differences, no single religion holds a monopoly over salvation. Like the Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant, I believe all religions strive towards the same understanding of the Divine and arrive at different interpretations. These differences, far from excluding any one faith from attaining the “other-worldly,” unite believers on a common journey of enlightenment. The lessons from this search for truth illustrated in The Conference of the Birds was one of my biggest takeaways from this course. I think people do themselves such a disservice in believing that their way contains the only Gospel Truth. There are so many different routes linking this world to the next. If a believer genuinely perceives the Divine as infinite, how would this not be the case?

This multiplicity of paths to the Divine is what inspired Week Twelve’s imitation of Persepolis. Though dealing more with my own spiritual journey, the comic strip template allowed me to depict the variety of examples necessary to highlight this theme. In high school, my sophomore year theology teacher taught us about Divine Revelation and the different ways in which God unveils Himself to humanity. There are so many areas of my life in which I see proof of this divinity so plainly. I’ve spoken with non-believers who are frustrated by the fact that if God exists, why shouldn’t He come down or show Himself to us? I find it so hard to stop myself in those moments and scream, “He’s right there! He’s in you, He’s in me! He’s in everything! Don’t you see it?” But evidently, the answer is ‘no.’ If I truly believe in an infinite, omnipotent God, shouldn’t it make sense from this conception that a direct revelation would be too much for my finite mind to comprehend? This thought helps me to search for the beauty and good in everything around me and recognize it as having its roots in the Divine. Whether that be reflected through love, through kindness, through nature, or even through suffering, all of these help me to appreciate my faith and broaden my own conception of my creator on a much grander scale. This past semester has only reinforced this belief. I was challenged, enlightened, wounded, healed, distressed, and relieved all at once and I could not be more thankful for this period of tremendous growth. It is my sincere wish that readers of this blog might experience the joy and hope offered by faith at some point in their lives, or if they already have, to hold onto it for as long as they live. Life is hard and suffering does not discriminate, but with faith, our burden is made much lighter.

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United States Institute of Peace

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Islam Is a Religion of Peace

Monday, November 9, 2015

/ READ TIME: 20 minutes

By: Manal Omar

Can the wave of violence sweeping the Islamic world be traced back to the religion's core teachings? A USIP-FP Peace Channel debate about the roots of extremism.

There is a tempting logic that has gained prominence in the post-9/11 world that attributes violent extremism from Muslims to the core tenets of Islam. It is tempting, of course, because if there is one single driver of conflict, after all, then there is one solution. Trying to understand the complex roots of violence can seem overwhelming, and trying to find solutions to it can leave policymakers and civic leaders paralyzed. Yet the concept of one cause — and, therefore, one solution — can be very dangerous. In the best case, this oversimplification may waste financial and human efforts to solve problems because they are based on a faulty diagnosis. In the worst case, it can actually fuel the conflict.

The temptation toward simplicity is evident even in the question posed in this debate. The framing reveals a fundamental error: that violent extremism is fundamental to Islam rather than committed by individuals. The fact that there is violence emanating from parts of the Muslim world does not mean that violence is a product of the religion.

The complicated truth of the matter is that the extremist violence that has overtaken a majority of Muslim countries, including Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan, is the product of complex political and social circumstances. They include colonial legacies and more modern great power politics — and the artificial borders that they bequeathed the region. The violence is perpetrated by official structures that favor a few over the many, and the collapse of government institutions. Religion, certainly, is part of the mix, especially in fragile nations or under authoritarian regimes, but that comes into play not because of the nature of the faith but because of the way it is abused and manipulated.

To grasp this complexity, it is important to understand three areas: the role of global politics that have destabilized the region and inflamed tensions; how dysfunctional states create an opening for extremism; and finally, how religion fills the gaps created by international and domestic uncertainties.

Let’s start with the politics. In doing so, it’s important to note that Western states have played a significant role in the rise of extremist groups. Middle East experts such as Hassan Hassan, who co-authored the book  ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror , argue that the emergence of the self-styled Islamic State (another name for ISIS) has more to do with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East — who it supports, how its military interventions have changed the region — than with the Quran. The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority’s 2003 order to dissolve the Iraqi Armed Forces, for example, left hundreds of thousands of well-trained soldiers bitter and unemployed. Many of these officers  now provide the militants with the military expertise required to conquer territory as quickly as they have.

Another example of the United States’ role in stoking extremism is its support for the United Nations’ policies on Israel, which critics have attacked as a double standard. In 2003, John Austin, a former British Parliamentarian, wrote an  article  for the Palestinian NGO  Miftah  citing conflicts from Kosovo to East Timor to Iraq to Rwanda. In each of those cases the U.N. imposed enforcement measures such as arms embargos, and international tribunals to prosecute crimes against humanity. Yet on Israel’s illegal building of settlements, there has been no action despite numerous U.N. resolutions dating back to the late 1970s often because of U.S. intervention on its behalf.

As for state-level problems, domestic power struggles and government dysfunction across the Middle East have also opened the door for violent extremist groups. Robert I. Rotberg outlines in his  book,  When States Fail: Causes and Consequences,  that a state’s failure to provide citizens with basic rights and services allows violent nonstate actors to emerge and take control. Failures were not limited to economic needs; a lack of political inclusion, freedom of expression, and the right to live with dignity have been primary drivers of youth radicalization and violence. A more recent example can be seen in Iraq and Syria: the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front have offered services and material benefits to lure citizens into joining the fight.

A 2015  study  by Mercy Corps,  Youth & Consequences: Unemployment, Injustice and Violence , which examined conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia, and Somalia, found that the principal drivers of political violence are not the high unemployment or lack of opportunities traditionally articulated by development agencies. Rather, the  study found that the political violence, which is often framed in religious terms, was linked to experiences of injustice: discrimination, corruption, and abuse by security forces.

In this context, religious spaces often become incredibly important — and powerful. Extremist groups don’t just offer services such as employment, they also proffer a utopian ideology that extends beyond the rhetoric of suicide and sacrifice to promise an ideal state built on strict principles of “justice” and order based on their twisted interpretation of Islam. Islam, in turn, becomes a tool for violent groups to attract support for their causes, much like the way nation-states have used nationalism and patriotic fervor. And the only venue often available for recruitment in otherwise repressive societies is the more radical religious institutions.

Under authoritarian rulers such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, many countries in the Middle East and beyond eliminated media outlets, student unions, and professional associations that were not directly under the control of the state. For Muslims in these environments, the mosque became the sole channel for expressing opposition, and the weekly Friday sermon the only place for dissidents to reach the people.

Using Islam as a tool of political extremism has led to many different results. The circumstances that produced the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq are different from what shaped Boko Haram in Nigeria, though both claim to be genuine Islamic groups. In the latter case, the extremist organization evolved as a response to the Nigerian government’s heavy-handed approach and ultimate killing of the group’s founder, Muhammad Yusuf in 2009. Prior to that, the group mainly had waged low-level attacks, rather than the spectacular assaults they now conduct against civilians and the Nigerian military.

Boko Haram and its ilk have manipulated Islam as a powerful recruitment tool, in much the same way Western states use nationalism to mobilize support for wars. Confrontations such as the invasion of Iraq, or the Soviet Union’s incursion into Afghanistan, have sparked the creation of more extremist groups — by destroying civil society, for example — than religious belief ever could.

Those who claim Islam is an inherently violent religion ignore the overwhelming majority of adherents to the faith — there are more than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide — who live peacefully. They would also ignore that using religion as a justification for violence is nothing new. There are countless examples of members of other religions invoking faith as they perpetrate violence — Buddhist nationalist movements in Sri Lanka and Myanmar instigating violent campaigns against Muslims, for instance. Most people are able to critically analyze these movements and not lay the blame on Buddhism or Christianity.

The most prominent Muslim academics agree extremist groups believe in a fringe version of Islam well outside the scholarly consensus. In 2014, more than 120 of the world’s top Muslim leaders and scholars wrote an  open letter to the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his followers, using the  same religious texts  the militants cite and arguing the group’s practices are not legitimate in Islam. Signatories include the former and current Grand Muftis of Egypt and top Muslim clerics from Nigeria, the U.S., Canada, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

Muslims have taken grave risks to condemn violence, and some are on the front lines militarily too. Youth activists across the world regularly receive death threats as they offer alternative narratives to resolve conflict through nonviolence. Others have picked up arms to combat these extremist groups when condemnation is not enough. It is Muslims on the ground throughout Iraq and Syria who are leading the fight against the Islamic State. If the tenets of Islam could truly cause violence, all these Muslims would be joining the Islamic State instead of risking their lives to stop it.

Ironically, those who insist the Islamic State is a natural outgrowth of Islam share a similarly narrow conception of the religion as its followers.

Ironically, those who insist the Islamic State is a natural outgrowth of Islam share a similarly narrow conception of the religion as its followers. Despite the wealth of diversity and growth within Islam, they insist on defining it as monolithic.

Intisar Rabb, a professor of law and the director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, argued in an email exchange, “Sunni Islam’s most curious blessing and its curse is perhaps its radical legal pluralism: the ability to contemplate that any interpretation of the law, so long as it relates to and engages a sophisticated process of interpretation, is a good-faith effort to arrive at the ‘right answer,’ which may change over time.” Historically, this has allowed for change and reformulation of the law to fit times and places as disparate as 7th century China to 10th century Baghdad to 20th century America, Rabb said. This characteristic, however, can become a curse, because it speaks of no final authority and often leaves a vacuum that permits crude or hostile interpretations that hold sway with the unsuspecting.

Shiite Muslims, for their part, adhere to a broad norm of following a living expert interpreter of Islamic law (called a mujtahid), who can evaluate and refine Islamic values for contemporary circumstances. In the context of Iraq, that has proved a valuable asset in containing some violence. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s statements and fatwas (religious rulings) even since the beginning of the conflict in 2003 directly prevented mass revenge killings on a number   of occasions . One of his  fatwas  this year called for restraint after Shiite-dominated Iraqi government troops and militias freed Tikrit and revealed mass grave sites that presented visceral evidence of June’s massacre of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Iraqi soldiers at the nearby Camp Speicher, when the Islamic State overran the military base. The revelation had heightened the potential of  revenge  attacks against Sunnis because the Islamic State claims to represent and defend all Sunnis.

Besides exacerbating conflict, oversimplifying the underlying causes by laying the blame at the door of an entire religion can mean billions of aid dollars wasted in chasing a false premise, and opportunities missed in the meantime. Seeking to use moderate Muslim clerics superficially to counter extremist messaging, for example, may have little impact if the root of the problem lies elsewhere.

Solving the problem of violent extremism demands embracing the complexity of the problem over the simplistic black-and-white narratives used by extremists on both sides of the debate. Scholarly analysis, and the lived experiences of more than 1 billion Muslims, including myself, makes clear that violence committed by Muslims is not because of the faith. Once this is understood, the world can stop focusing misguided attention on one ostensible factor that has been twisted unrecognizably. With a more balanced approach, it’s possible to demonstrate that violent extremism has no state or religion, and that all identities, ethnicities, and religions are part of the solution.

Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s piece  here.

Reposted with permission from  ForeignPolicy.com , Source: “ Islam Is a Religion of Peace "

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s).

PUBLICATION TYPE: Analysis

The truth about whether Islam is a religion of violence or peace

Lecturer, History and Political Thought, Western Sydney University

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Milad Milani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Islam has a history of violence. Muslims can be violent. Denying this is not at all different to denying that Islam is peaceful and that all Muslims are pacifists. The dichotomy is simply false.

The Qur’an contains injunctions that call both for peace and for violence. The problem is not that they are there; the difficulty is that non-violent and militant Muslims appear equally justified. For some, the peace of God is through his sword; for others, it is found in his unbounded mercy. For example:

The servants of the All-merciful are those who walk in the earth modestly and who, when the ignorant address them, say, ‘Peace’. (Q 25:63) Fight them, and God will chastise them at your hands and degrade them, and He will help you against them, and bring healing to the breasts of a people who believe. (Q 9:14)

Part of the problem is that there are concerns about religious content that are not dealt with openly. And there are just too many hard conclusions made about religious texts, often made by those who know less than they claim.

Looking at the three major religious traditions that believe in one God (Christianity, Islam and Judaism), all three make reference in their religious texts to both violence and peace.

So the fact that a religious text contains violent verses doesn’t make it a violent religion. But it’s also a fact that a religious text containing peaceful verses doesn’t make that religion peaceful either.

‘By their fruit you will recognise them’

Violence is not new to the history of religions, nor is it a phenomenon solely attached to the history of Islam.

Christians and Buddhists also have a track record of fanaticism, such as the bombing of abortion clinics and hardliner Buddhists in Myanmar .

Religious content may be a catalyst for violent action, but it should be remembered that its reading relies heavily on human interpretation. To put it mildly, “ The world is bleeding to death through misunderstanding .”

Of course “ it can never be right to kill in the name of God ”, but it should also be dawning on all peoples that it is time to let go of pretensions that anyone knows the will of God.

This point directly underlines Darren Aronofky’s recent film portrayal of the biblical story of Noah. Whether you like the movie or not, it communicates an important message: the absolute silence of God.

In the film, Noah is forced to wrestle with his deepest, darkest self to understand and make decisions that will affect the lives of others. When Noah, played by Russell Crowe (and shown in the clip below), is about to kill the twin daughters born to his daughter-in-law – because he thinks it is the will of God – at length he cannot. He cannot find it in himself to perform such an act.

The film is a timely reminder that sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes we make the right choices. And that is what is at the heart of any debate on religion, religious content and its interpretation: the choices we make.

Rather than listening to the claims and counter-claims about what “authentic” Islam really stands for, we might be better to pay more attention to how advocates of their faith choose to live their lives.

That way, it might be easier to avoid making assumptions about what the religion might mean, and instead focus more on how the faithful live.

The enemy of peace is not religion, but those who pursue acts of terror and violence against the innocent in the name of religion.

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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

Overview Essay

Interreligious: Religious Diversity and Ecology

Sam Mickey , University of San Francisco

Introduction

In the broadest sense of the word, “interreligious” describes any interactions between or across different religious traditions, communities, or individuals. That could include interactions that religions have with one another and with other ways of being and knowing that are not directly affiliated with a religion (e.g., secularism, humanism, and sciences).

Some terms that are somewhat synonymous with “interreligious” include “interfaith” and “interbelief,” which tend to be used more narrowly in reference to interactions within one group of religions, typically the Abrahamic religions, such that the word applies primarily or exclusively to relations between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is important to notice that the specific meanings of these terms vary considerably depending on the specific person or organization using them. For example, the word “interfaith” can be used in multiple ways. Most generally, like the word “interreligious,” “interfaith” can refer to relations between any religions. It can apply more narrowly to interactions within Abrahamic religions, and it can be used even more specifically to refer to connections between different sects or schools in one religion, such as Lutheran, Methodist, and Catholic branches of Christianity, or Soto and Rinzai sects of Buddhism, or the Shia and Sunni denominations of Islam.  

Interactions across religions are common in contemporary society, as human communities from around the world become increasingly interconnected through processes of globalization, including international trade, migration, urbanization, and the development of information and communication technologies. However, while interreligious phenomena are unique in the specific way they show up in globalized societies, they are not new. Throughout history, religious communities have had some engagement with people whose religious expressions (e.g., rituals, doctrines, narratives, politics, etc.) appear different, strange, or other, perhaps representing a different faction within a religion or even a different religion entirely. For example, encounters with Egyptian, Babylonian, and Roman religions were part of the development of Judaism before the Common Era. In China, so many sects, schools, and styles of life emerged between the sixth and third century BCE, including Daoism and Confucianism, they became known collectively as the Hundred Schools of Thought. Trade and migration connected various communities of indigenous peoples in the Americas during the pre-Columbian era. In short, all religions have an interreligious dimension.  

Every religion provides some ways of responding to difference and otherness, some ways of engaging in cooperative or competitive exchanges, and some ways of negotiating multiple and even apparently contradictory claims. Sometimes a religion is held up as the best (triumphalism) or as the only true path (exclusivism), and sometimes multiple and even all religions are considered as true paths (pluralism) or as different manifestations of an ideal truth (universalism). Sometimes elements from two or more religions coexist in hybrid forms, and sometimes they are integrated and synthesized into a new religion (syncretism). Responses to religious difference range from hostility and opposition to tolerance and hospitality. To be sure, interreligious contact is not always beneficial to the parties involved. Many individuals and institutions are working toward interreligious dialogue, cooperation, and peace, including sustainable and regenerative responses to environmental degradation and the climate emergency. However, interreligious dynamics often involve conflict, violence, and war. Alongside several factors, such as resource scarcity and political instability, religious narratives and affects can contribute to motivations or justifications for interreligious conflict. Interreligious interactions are matters of war and peace. They are matters of shared survival, and that survival cannot be fully understood without considering the material conditions of survival—the life, land, air, and water without which religious communities cannot exist, and indeed, without which humankind cannot exist.

Throughout history, there are several instances of interreligious cooperation, with political leaders or religious communities organizing around inclusivity and acceptance toward multiple religions, from at least as early as Ashoka the Great (the Indian emperor who, during his rule in the third century BCE, promoted Buddhism while also promoting nonviolence and attitudes of acceptance toward all religions) up to modern examples, like the Baha’i Faith, which emerged in the nineteenth century and is oriented around an acceptance of the truth of all religions. Increasingly, as environmental concerns have become more urgent and large-scale throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, scholars and practitioners of religion have become engaged with ecology and environmentalism, and so too have advocates of interreligious dialogue.

The development of the academic field of religious studies, beginning in the nineteenth century with historical and comparative analyses of religions, contributed scholarly support for events and organizations dedicated to interreligious dialogue, such as the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which began in 1893 as an event oriented toward interreligious dialogue. More recently, the field of religion and ecology and related areas of inquiry (e.g., spiritual ecology, religion and nature, eco-theology) have contributed scholarly support for interreligious engagements with environmental issues. Accordingly, as the Parliament of the World’s Religions continues to hold meetings, increasing attention is devoted to religious responses to environmental issues. This is indicated by the Parliament’s Climate Commitments Project . Interreligious perspectives inform numerous ecologically engaged projects that are currently active in local and international milieus, and several organizations have released interreligious statements that call for allied multicultural responses to the climate emergency and other environmental issues.

Interreligious cooperation is crucial for negotiating collective responses to environmental problems that impact people of different faiths. This is evident in transboundary environmental problems (e.g., acid rain, air pollution, and climate change), which move across regional and national boundaries and thus impact diverse religious groups. Cases like climate change and mass extinction require responses at a global scale and thus involve the religious diversity of the entire human population. At that scale, the very idea of “world’s religions” undergoes a profound transformation, shifting away from an emphasis on the most populous or most politically influential religions of the modern world, and shifting toward an understanding of the planetary context of religious diversity.

Bibliography

Cornille, Catherine, ed. The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue (Oxford and Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

Ingram, Paul O. You Have Been Told What Is Good: Interreligious Dialogue and Climate Change (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016).

Meister, Chad V., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, eds. Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2017).

Header photo credit: Faith in Future Meeting, Bristol, UK; Courtesy of ARC, © Katia Marsh

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Why Muslims Are Rising Fastest and the Unaffiliated Are Shrinking as a Share of the World’s Population

Table of contents.

• Chapter 1: Main Factors Driving Population Growth
• Chapter 2: Population Projections by Religious Group
• Religiously Unaffiliated
• Adherents of Folk Religions
• Other Religions
• Chapter 3: Population Projections by Region
• Asia-Pacific
• Latin America and the Caribbean
• Middle East-North Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• North America
• Appendix A: Methodology

The religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well as by people switching faiths. Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion. If current trends continue, by 2050 …

• The number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world.
• Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.
• The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in 2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they are today.
• In Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population.
• India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.
• In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion. Muslims will be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.
• Four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

These are among the global religious trends highlighted in new demographic projections by the Pew Research Center. The projections take into account the current size and geographic distribution of the world’s major religions, age differences, fertility and mortality rates, international migration and patterns in conversion.

As of 2010, Christianity was by far the world’s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth. Islam was second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23% of the global population.

If current demographic trends continue, however, Islam will nearly catch up by the middle of the 21st century. Between 2010 and 2050, the world’s total population is expected to rise to 9.3 billion, a 35% increase. 1 Over that same period, Muslims – a comparatively youthful population with high fertility rates – are projected to increase by 73%. The number of Christians also is projected to rise, but more slowly, at about the same rate (35%) as the global population overall.

As a result, according to the Pew Research projections, by 2050 there will be near parity between Muslims (2.8 billion, or 30% of the population) and Christians (2.9 billion, or 31%), possibly for the first time in history. 2

With the exception of Buddhists, all of the world’s major religious groups are poised for at least some growth in absolute numbers in the coming decades. The global Buddhist population is expected to be fairly stable because of low fertility rates and aging populations in countries such as China, Thailand and Japan.

Worldwide, the Hindu population is projected to rise by 34%, from a little over 1 billion to nearly 1.4 billion, roughly keeping pace with overall population growth. Jews, the smallest religious group for which separate projections were made, are expected to grow 16%, from a little less than 14 million in 2010 to 16.1 million worldwide in 2050.

Adherents of various folk religions – including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions – are projected to increase by 11%, from 405 million to nearly 450 million.

And all other religions combined – an umbrella category that includes Baha’is, Jains, Sikhs, Taoists and many smaller faiths – are projected to increase 6%, from a total of approximately 58 million to more than 61 million over the same period. 3

While growing in absolute size, however, folk religions, Judaism and “other religions” (the umbrella category considered as a whole) will not keep pace with global population growth. Each of these groups is projected to make up a smaller percentage of the world’s population in 2050 than it did in 2010. 4

Similarly, the religiously unaffiliated population is projected to shrink as a percentage of the global population, even though it will increase in absolute number. In 2010, censuses and surveys indicate, there were about 1.1 billion atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. 5 By 2050, the unaffiliated population is expected to exceed 1.2 billion. But, as a share of all the people in the world, those with no religious affiliation are projected to decline from 16% in 2010 to 13% by the middle of this century.

At the same time, however, the unaffiliated are expected to continue to increase as a share of the population in much of Europe and North America. In the United States, for example, the unaffiliated are projected to grow from an estimated 16% of the total population (including children) in 2010 to 26% in 2050.

As the example of the unaffiliated shows, there will be vivid geographic differences in patterns of religious growth in the coming decades. One of the main determinants of that future growth is where each group is geographically concentrated today. Religions with many adherents in developing countries – where birth rates are high, and infant mortality rates generally have been falling – are likely to grow quickly. Much of the worldwide growth of Islam and Christianity, for example, is expected to take place in sub-Saharan Africa. Today’s religiously unaffiliated population, by contrast, is heavily concentrated in places with low fertility and aging populations, such as Europe, North America, China and Japan.

Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3.1 children per woman – well above replacement level (2.1), the minimum typically needed to maintain a stable population. 6 Christians are second, at 2.7 children per woman. Hindu fertility (2.4) is similar to the global average (2.5). Worldwide, Jewish fertility (2.3 children per woman) also is above replacement level. All the other groups have fertility levels too low to sustain their populations: folk religions (1.8 children per woman), other religions (1.7), the unaffiliated (1.7) and Buddhists (1.6).

Another important determinant of growth is the current age distribution of each religious group – whether its adherents are predominantly young, with their prime childbearing years still ahead, or older and largely past their childbearing years.

In 2010, more than a quarter of the world’s total population (27%) was under the age of 15. But an even higher percentage of Muslims (34%) and Hindus (30%) were younger than 15, while the share of Christians under 15 matched the global average (27%). These bulging youth populations are among the reasons that Muslims are projected to grow faster than the world’s overall population and that Hindus and Christians are projected to roughly keep pace with worldwide population growth.

All the remaining groups have smaller-than-average youth populations, and many of them have disproportionately large numbers of adherents over the age of 59. For example, 11% of the world’s population was at least 60 years old in 2010. But fully 20% of Jews around the world are 60 or older, as are 15% of Buddhists, 14% of Christians, 14% of adherents of other religions (taken as a whole), 13% of the unaffiliated and 11% of adherents of folk religions. By contrast, just 7% of Muslims and 8% of Hindus are in this oldest age category.

In addition to fertility rates and age distributions, religious switching is likely to play a role in the growth of religious groups. But conversion patterns are complex and varied. In some countries, it is fairly common for adults to leave their childhood religion and switch to another faith. In others, changes in religious identity are rare, legally cumbersome or even illegal.

The Pew Research Center projections attempt to incorporate patterns in religious switching in 70 countries where surveys provide information on the number of people who say they no longer belong to the religious group in which they were raised. In the projection model, all directions of switching are possible, and they may be partially offsetting. In the United States, for example, surveys find that some people who were raised with no religious affiliation have switched to become Christians, while some who grew up as Christians have switched to become unaffiliated. These types of patterns are projected to continue as future generations come of age. (For more details on how and where switching was modeled, see the Methodology . For alternative growth scenarios involving either switching in additional countries or no switching at all, see Chapter 1 .)

Over the coming decades, Christians are expected to experience the largest net losses from switching. Globally, about 40 million people are projected to switch into Christianity, while 106 million are projected to leave, with most joining the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated. (See chart above.)

All told, the unaffiliated are expected to add 97 million people and lose 36 million via switching, for a net gain of 61 million by 2050. Modest net gains through switching also are expected for Muslims (3 million), adherents of folk religions (3 million) and members of other religions (2 million). Jews are expected to experience a net loss of about 300,000 people due to switching, while Buddhists are expected to lose nearly 3 million.

International migration is another factor that will influence the projected size of religious groups in various regions and countries.

Forecasting future migration patterns is difficult, because migration is often linked to government policies and international events that can change quickly. For this reason, many population projections do not include migration in their models. But working with researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, the Pew Research Center has developed an innovative way of using data on past migration patterns to estimate the religious composition of migrant flows in the decades ahead. (For details on how the projections were made, see Chapter 1 .)

The impact of migration can be seen in the examples shown in the graph at the right, which compares projection scenarios with and without migration in the regions where it will have the greatest impact. In Europe, for instance, the Muslim share of the population is expected to increase from 5.9% in 2010 to 10.2% in 2050 when migration is taken into account along with other demographic factors that are driving population change, such as fertility rates and age. Without migration, the Muslim share of Europe’s population in 2050 is projected to be nearly two percentage points lower (8.4%). In North America, the Hindu share of the population is expected to nearly double in the decades ahead, from 0.7% in 2010 to 1.3% in 2050, when migration is included in the projection models. Without migration, the Hindu share of the region’s population would remain about the same (0.8%).

In the Middle East and North Africa, the continued migration of Christians into the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) is expected to offset the exodus of Christians from other countries in the region. 7 If migration were not factored into the 2050 projections, the estimated Christian share of the region’s population would drop below 3%. With migration factored in, however, the estimated Christian share is expected to be just above 3% (down from nearly 4% in 2010).

Beyond the Year 2050

This report describes how the global religious landscape would change if current demographic trends continue. With each passing year, however, there is a chance that unforeseen events – war, famine, disease, technological innovation, political upheaval, etc. – will alter the size of one religious group or another. Owing to the difficulty of peering more than a few decades into the future, the projections stop at 2050.

Readers may wonder, though, what would happen to the population trajectories highlighted in this report if they were projected into the second half of this century. Given the rapid projected increase from 2010 to 2050 in the Muslim share of the world’s population, would Muslims eventually outnumber Christians? And, if so, when?

The answer depends on continuation of the trends described in Chapter 1. If the main projection model is extended beyond 2050, the Muslim share of the world’s population would equal the Christian share, at roughly 32% each, around 2070. After that, the number of Muslims would exceed the number of Christians, but both religious groups would grow, roughly in tandem, as shown in the graph above. By the year 2100, about 1% more of the world’s population would be Muslim (35%) than Christian (34%).

The projected growth of Muslims and Christians would be driven largely by the continued expansion of Africa’s population. Due to the heavy concentration of Christians and Muslims in this high-fertility region, both groups would increase as a percentage of the global population. Combined, the world’s two largest religious groups would make up more than two-thirds of the global population in 2100 (69%), up from 61% in 2050 and 55% in 2010.

It bears repeating, however, that many factors could alter these trajectories. For example, if a large share of China’s population were to switch to Christianity (as discussed in this  sidebar ), that shift alone could bolster Christianity’s current position as the world’s most populous religion. Or if disaffiliation were to become common in countries with large Muslim populations – as it is now in some countries with large Christian populations – that trend could slow or reverse the increase in Muslim numbers.

Regional and Country-Level Projections

In addition to making projections at the global level, this report projects religious change in 198 countries and territories with at least 100,000 people as of 2010, covering 99.9% of the world’s population. Population estimates for an additional 36 countries and territories are included in regional and global totals throughout the report. The report also divides the world into six major regions and looks at how each region’s religious composition is likely to change from 2010 to 2050, assuming that current patterns in migration and other demographic trends continue. 8

Due largely to high fertility, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to experience the fastest overall growth, rising from 12% of the world’s population in 2010 to about 20% in 2050. The Middle East-North Africa region also is expected to grow faster than the world as a whole, edging up from 5% of the global population in 2010 to 6% in 2050. Ongoing growth in both regions will fuel global increases in the Muslim population. In addition, sub-Saharan Africa’s Christian population is expected to double, from 517 million in 2010 to 1.1 billion in 2050. The share of the world’s Christians living in sub-Saharan Africa will rise from 24% in 2010 to 38% in 2050.

Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to have a declining share of the world’s population (53% in 2050, compared with 59% in 2010). This will be reflected in the slower growth of religions heavily concentrated in the region, including Buddhism and Chinese folk religions, as well as slower growth of Asia’s large unaffiliated population. One exception is Hindus, who are overwhelmingly concentrated in India, where the population is younger and fertility rates are higher than in China or Japan. As previously mentioned, Hindus are projected to roughly keep pace with global population growth. India’s large Muslim population also is poised for rapid growth. Although India will continue to have a Hindu majority, by 2050 it is projected to have the world’s largest Muslim population, surpassing Indonesia.

The remaining geographic regions also will contain declining shares of the world’s population: Europe is projected to go from 11% to 8%, Latin American and the Caribbean from 9% to 8%, and North America from 5% to a little less than 5%.

Europe is the only region where the total population is projected to decline. Europe’s Christian population is expected to shrink by about 100 million people in the coming decades, dropping from 553 million to 454 million. While Christians will remain the largest religious group in Europe, they are projected to drop from three-quarters of the population to less than two-thirds. By 2050, nearly a quarter of Europeans (23%) are expected to have no religious affiliation, and Muslims will make up about 10% of the region’s population, up from 5.9% in 2010. Over the same period, the number of Hindus in Europe is expected to roughly double, from a little under 1.4 million (0.2% of Europe’s population) to nearly 2.7 million (o.4%), mainly as a result of immigration. Buddhists appear headed for similarly rapid growth in Europe – a projected rise from 1.4 million to 2.5 million.

In North America , Muslims and followers of “other religions” are the fastest-growing religious groups. In the United States, for example, the share of the population that belongs to other religions is projected to more than double – albeit from a very small base – rising from 0.6% to 1.5%. 9 Christians are projected to decline from 78% of the U.S. population in 2010 to 66% in 2050, while the unaffiliated are expected to rise from 16% to 26%. And by the middle of the 21st century, the United States is likely to have more Muslims (2.1% of the population) than people who identify with the Jewish faith (1.4%). 10

In Latin America and the Caribbean , Christians will remain the largest religious group, making up 89% of the population in 2050, down slightly from 90% in 2010. Latin America’s religiously unaffiliated population is projected to grow both in absolute number and percentage terms, rising from about 45 million people (8%) in 2010 to 65 million (9%) in 2050. 11

Changing Religious Majorities

Several countries are projected to have a different religious majority in 2050 than they did in 2010. The number of countries with Christian majorities is expected to decline from 159 to 151, as Christians are projected to drop below 50% of the population in Australia, Benin, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Macedonia and the United Kingdom.

Muslims in 2050 are expected to make up more than 50% of the population in 51 countries, two more than in 2010, as both the Republic of Macedonia and Nigeria are projected to gain Muslim majorities. But Nigeria also will continue to have a very large Christian population. Indeed, Nigeria is projected to have the third-largest Christian population in the world by 2050, after the United States and Brazil.

As of 2050, the largest religious group in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands is expected to be the unaffiliated.

About These Projections

While many people have offered predictions about the future of religion, these are the first formal demographic projections using data on age, fertility, mortality, migration and religious switching for multiple religious groups around the world. Demographers at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, gathered the input data from more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers, an effort that has taken six years and will continue.

The projections cover eight major groups: Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, adherents of folk religions, adherents of other religions and the unaffiliated (see Appendix C: Defining the Religious Groups). Because censuses and surveys in many countries do not provide information on religious subgroups – such as Sunni and Shia Muslims or Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians – the projections are for each religious group as a whole. Data on subgroups of the unaffiliated are also unavailable in many countries. As a result, separate projections are not possible for atheists or agnostics.

The projection model was developed in collaboration with researchers in the Age and Cohort Change Project at IIASA, who are world leaders in population projections methodology. The model uses an advanced version of the cohort-component method typically employed by demographers to forecast population growth. It starts with a population of baseline age groups, or cohorts, divided by sex and religion. Each cohort is projected into the future by adding likely gains (immigrants and people switching in) and by subtracting likely losses (deaths, emigrants and people switching out) year by year. The youngest cohorts, ages 0-4, are created by applying age-specific fertility rates to each female cohort in the childbearing years (ages 15-49), with children inheriting the mother’s religion. For more details, see the Methodology . 12

In the process of gathering input data and developing the projection model, the Pew Research Center previously published reports on the current size and geographic distribution of major religious groups, including Muslims (2009), Christians (2011) and several other faiths (2012). An initial set of projections for one religious group, Muslims, was published in 2011, although it did not attempt to take religious switching into account.

Some social theorists have suggested that as countries develop economically, more of their inhabitants will move away from religious affiliation. While that has been the general experience in some parts of the world, notably Europe, it is not yet clear whether it is a universal pattern. 13 In any case, the projections in this report are not based on theories about economic development leading to secularization.

Rather, the projections extend the recently observed patterns of religious switching in all countries for which sufficient data are available (70 countries in all). In addition, the projections reflect the United Nations’ expectation that in countries with high fertility rates, those rates gradually will decline in coming decades, alongside rising female educational attainment. And the projections assume that people gradually are living longer in most countries. These and other key input data and assumptions are explained in detail in Chapter 1 and the Methodology ( Appendix A ).

Since religious change has never previously been projected on this scale, some cautionary words are in order. Population projections are estimates built on current population data and assumptions about demographic trends, such as declining birth rates and rising life expectancies in particular countries. The projections are what will occur if the current data are accurate and current trends continue. But many events – scientific discoveries, armed conflicts, social movements, political upheavals, natural disasters and changing economic conditions, to name just a few – can shift demographic trends in unforeseen ways. That is why the projections are limited to a 40-year time frame, and subsequent chapters of this report try to give a sense of how much difference it could make if key assumptions were different.

For example, China’s 1.3 billion people (as of 2010) loom very large in global trends. At present, about 5% of China’s population is estimated to be Christian, and more than 50% is religiously unaffiliated. Because reliable figures on religious switching in China are not available, the projections do not contain any forecast for conversions in the world’s most populous country. But if Christianity expands in China in the decades to come – as some experts predict – then by 2050, the global numbers of Christians may be higher than projected, and the decline in the percentage of the world’s population that is religiously unaffiliated may be even sharper. (For more details on the possible impact of religious switching in China, see Chapter 1 .)

Finally, readers should bear in mind that within every major religious group, there is a spectrum of belief and practice. The projections are based on the number of people who self-identify with each religious group, regardless of their level of observance. What it means to be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish or a member of any other faith may vary from person to person, country to country, and decade to decade.

Acknowledgements

These population projections were produced by the Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Funding for the Global Religious Futures project comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

Many staff members in the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life project contributed to this effort. Conrad Hackett was the lead researcher and primary author of this report. Alan Cooperman served as lead editor. Anne Shi and Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa made major contributions to data collection, storage and analysis. Bill Webster created the graphics and Stacy Rosenberg and Ben Wormald oversaw development of the interactive data presentations and the Global Religious Futures website. Sandra Stencel, Greg Smith, Michael Lipka and Aleksandra Sandstrom provided editorial assistance. The report was number-checked by Shi, Esparza Ochoa, Claire Gecewicz and Angelina Theodorou.

Several researchers in the Age and Cohort Change project of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis collaborated on the projections, providing invaluable expertise on advanced (“multistate”) population modeling and standardization of input data. Marcin Stonawski wrote the cutting-edge software used for these projections and led the collection and analysis of European data. Michaela Potančoková standardized the fertility data. Vegard Skirbekk coordinated IIASA’s research contributions. Additionally, Guy Abel at the Vienna Institute of Demography helped construct the country-level migration flow data used in the projections.

Over the past six years, a number of former Pew Research Center staff members also played critical roles in producing the population projections. Phillip Connor prepared the migration input data, wrote descriptions of migration results and methods, and helped write the chapters on each religious group and geographic region. Noble Kuriakose was involved in nearly all stages of the project and helped draft the chapter on demographic factors and the Methodology. Former intern Joseph Naylor helped design maps, and David McClendon, another former intern, helped research global patterns of religious switching. The original concept for this study was developed by Luis Lugo, former director of the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life project, with assistance from former senior researcher Brian J. Grim and visiting senior research fellow Mehtab Karim.

Others at the Pew Research Center who provided editorial or research guidance include Michael Dimock, Claudia Deane, Scott Keeter, Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn. Communications support was provided by Katherine Ritchey and Russ Oates.

We also received very helpful advice and feedback on portions of this report from Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute; Roger Finke, Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives and Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, The Pennsylvania State University; Carl Haub, Senior Demographer, Population Reference Bureau; Todd Johnson, Associate Professor of Global Christianity and Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary; Ariela Keysar, Associate Research Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, Trinity College; Chaeyoon Lim, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Arland Thornton, Research Professor in the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan; Jenny Trinitapoli, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Demography and Religious Studies, The Pennsylvania State University; David Voas, Professor of Population Studies and Acting Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex; Robert Wuthnow, Andlinger Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University; and Fenggang Yang, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society, Purdue University.

While the data collection and projection methodology were guided by our consultants and advisers, the Pew Research Center is solely responsible for the interpretation and reporting of the data.

Roadmap to the Report

The remainder of this report details the projections from multiple angles. The first chapter looks at the demographic factors that shape the projections, including sections on fertility rates, life expectancy, age structure, religious switching and migration. The next chapter details projections by religious group, with separate sections on Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, adherents of folk or traditional religions, members of “other religions” (consolidated into a single group) and Jews. A final chapter takes a region-by-region look at the projections, including separate sections on Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, North America and sub-Saharan Africa.

• This overall projection (9.3 billion in 2050) matches the “medium variant” forecast in the United Nations Population Division’s World Population Prospects, 2010 revision. A recent update from the United Nations has a somewhat higher estimate, 9.55 billion. The U.N. does not make projections for religious groups. ↩
• Christianity began about six centuries before Islam, a head start that helps explain why some scholars believe that, in the past, Christians always have been more numerous than Muslims around the world. The Pew Research Center consulted several scholars on this historical question. Todd M. Johnson, co-editor of the “Atlas of Global Christianity,” and Houssain Kettani, author of independent estimates of the growth of Islam, contend that the number of Christians always has exceeded the number of Muslims. But some other experts, including Oxford University demographer David Coleman and Columbia University historian Richard W. Bulliet, say it is possible that Muslims may have outnumbered Christians globally sometime between 1000 and 1600 C.E., as Muslim populations expanded and Christian populations were decimated by the Black Death in Europe. All of the experts acknowledged that estimates of the size of religious groups in the Middle Ages are fraught with uncertainty. ↩
• Although some faiths in the “other religions” category have millions of adherents around the world, censuses and surveys in many countries do not measure them specifically. Because of the scarcity of census and survey data, Pew Research has not projected the size of individual religions within this category. Estimates of the global size of these faiths generally come from other sources, such as the religious groups themselves. By far the largest of these groups is Sikhs, who numbered about 25 million in 2010, according to the World Religion Database. Estimates from other sources on the size of additional groups in this category can be found in the sidebar in Chapter 2. ↩
• Jews make up such a small share of the global population, however, that the projected decline is not visible when percentages are rounded to one decimal place. Jews comprised 0.20% of the world’s population in 2010 and are projected to comprise 0.17% in 2050. Both figures are rounded to 0.2% (two-tenths of 1%) in the charts and tables in this report. ↩
• In many countries, censuses and demographic surveys do not enumerate atheists and agnostics as distinct populations, so it is not possible to reliably estimate the global size of these subgroups within the broad category of the religiously unaffiliated. ↩
• The standard measure of fertility in this report is the Total Fertility Rate. In countries with low infant and child mortality rates, a Total Fertility Rate close to 2.1 children per woman is sufficient for each generation to replace itself. Replacement-level fertility is higher in countries with elevated mortality rates. For more information on how fertility shapes population growth, see Chapter 1 . ↩
• Most immigrants come to GCC countries as temporary workers. These projections model a dynamic migrant population in GCC countries, in which some migrants leave as others arrive and, over time, there are net gains in the size of the foreign-born population within each GCC country. ↩
• The assumptions and trends used in these projections are discussed in Chapter 1 and in the Methodology section ( Appendix A ). ↩
• As noted above, the “other religions” category includes many groups – such as Baha’is, Sikhs and Wiccans – that cannot be projected separately due to lack of data on their fertility rates, age structure and other demographic characteristics. ↩
• People who identify their religion as Jewish in surveys are projected to decline from an estimated 1.8% of the U.S. population in 2010 to 1.4% in 2050. These figures, however, do not include “cultural” or “ethnic” Jews – people who have Jewish ancestry but do not describe their present religion as Jewish. A 2013 Pew Research survey found that more than one-in-five U.S. Jewish adults (22%) say they are atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, but consider themselves Jewish aside from religion and have at least one Jewish parent. For the purposes of the religious group projections in this report, people who identify their religion as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular are categorized as unaffiliated . To avoid double-counting, they are not included in the Jewish population. If the projected Jewish numbers were expanded to include cultural or ethnic Jews, it is possible that the size of the more broadly defined Jewish population might be greater than the projected number of U.S. Muslims in 2050. ↩
• The global projections are for Christians as a whole and do not attempt to calculate separate growth trajectories for subgroups such as Catholics and Protestants. However, other studies by the Pew Research Center show that Catholics have been declining and Protestants have been rising as a percentage of the population in some Latin American countries. See the Pew Research Center’s 2014 report “ Religion in Latin America .” ↩
• How accurate have population projections using the cohort-component method been in the past? An overview of how previous projections for general populations compare with actual population trends is provided in the National Research Council’s 2000 book “Beyond Six Billion: Forecasting the World’s Population,” http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9828/beyond-six-billion-forecasting-the-worlds- population . ↩
• For example, there is little evidence of economic development leading to religious disaffiliation in Muslim-majority countries. In Hindu-majority India, religious affiliation remains nearly universal despite rapid social and economic change. And in China, religious affiliation – though very difficult to measure – may be rising along with economic development. ↩

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Clerics in Indonesia are issuing fatwas, retrofitting mosques and imploring congregants to help turn the tide against climate change.

Inspecting solar panels that provide electrical power to Istiqlal Mosque in December in Jakarta, Indonesia. Credit...

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The faithful gathered in an imposing modernist building, thousands of men in skullcaps and women in veils sitting shoulder to shoulder. Their leader took to his perch and delivered a stark warning.

“Our fatal shortcomings as human beings have been that we treat the earth as just an object,” Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar said. “The greedier we are toward nature, the sooner doomsday will arrive.”

Then he prescribed the cure as laid out by their faith, which guides almost a quarter of humanity. Like fasting during Ramadan, it is every Muslim’s Fard al-Ayn , or obligation, to be a guardian of the earth. Like giving alms, his congregants should give waqf, a kind of religious donation, to renewable energy. Like daily prayers, planting trees should be a habit.

The environment is a central theme in the sermons of Mr. Nasaruddin, the influential head of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, who has tried to lead by example. Dismayed by the trash sullying the river that the mosque sits on, he ordered a cleanup. Shocked by astronomical utility bills, he retrofitted Southeast Asia’s largest mosque with solar panels, slow-flow faucets and a water recycling system — changes that helped make it the first place of worship to win a green building accolade from the World Bank.

The Grand Imam says he is simply following the Prophet Muhammad’s instructions that Muslims should care about nature.

He is not alone in this country of more than 200 million people, the majority of them Muslims, in trying to kindle an environmental awakening through Islam. Top clergy have issued fatwas, or edicts, on how to rein in climate change. Neighborhood activists are beseeching friends, family and neighbors that environmentalism is embedded in the Quran.

“As the country with the largest number of Muslim people in the world, we have to set a good example for Muslim society,” Grand Imam Nasaruddin said in an interview.

Istiqlal Mosque

MOUNT LEMONGAN

Al-Muharram Mosque

Indian Ocean

While other Muslim nations also have strains of this “Green Islam” movement, Indonesia could be a guide for the rest of the world if it can transform itself. The world’s biggest exporter of coal, it is one of the top global emitters of greenhouse gases. Thousands of hectares of its rainforests have been cleared to produce palm oil or dig for minerals. Wildfires and flooding have become more intense, byproducts of the extreme weather propelled by higher temperatures.

Lasting change is a tall order.

Its vast reserves of nickel, which is used in electric car batteries, are a pathway to a cleaner future. But processing nickel requires burning fossil fuels. The president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, has campaigned to expand production of biofuels that could lead to deforestation. With the capital, Jakarta, sinking into the sea, the departing president, Joko Widodo, is building a new capital that is billed as a green metropolis powered by renewable energy. But to do this, he has cleared forests.

Some clerics see environmentalism as peripheral to religion. And surveys suggest there is a widespread belief among Indonesians that climate change is not caused by human activity.

But educating 200 million Muslims, the proponents of the Green Islam movement say, can drive the change.

“People will not listen to laws, they don’t care,” said Hayu Prabowo, the head of environmental protection at the Indonesian Ulema Council, the nation’s highest Islamic authority. “They listen to religious leaders because their religious leaders say you can escape worldly laws, but you cannot escape God’s laws.”

The fatwas issued by the council are not legally binding, but he said they have had a notable effect. He pointed to studies that found that people living in areas with rich forests and peatlands are now more aware that it is wrong to clear these lands because of the fatwas declaring these activities as haram, or forbidden.

Clerics have not always been on board with the movement. Two decades ago, a regional branch of the Ulema Council issued a fatwa against Aak Abdullah al-Kudus, an environmentalist in East Java Province who tried to combine a tree-planting campaign with the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. He also received death threats.

But support for Mr. Aak grew over time, and he went on to start the Green Army, a group of tree-planting volunteers working to reforest Mount Lemongan, a small volcano where 2,000 hectares of protected forest had been cut down. Today it is covered with verdant bamboo and fruit trees.

“Our task is to be khalifahs, the guardians, of the earth,” Mr. Aak said. “That is the mission of Islam.”

Elok Faiqotul Mutia was inspired by the same sentiment. When she was 6 and growing up in a city in central Java, her father took her along to teak forests where she watched trees being cut down for her family’s furniture business. She said she wanted to “replace my father’s sins to the earth.”

One of her first jobs was a researcher for Greenpeace. She later founded Enter Nusantara, an organization that aims to educate youth on climate change.

Ms. Mutia said she believed Islam could offer Indonesians a gentler message about environmental conservation, pointing to a survey that found that Indonesian Muslims heed religious leaders more than scientists, the media and the president.

“Environmental activism always uses negative terms like ‘Phase out coal, reject coal power plants!’” Ms. Mutia said. “We want to show that in Islam, we already have values that support environmental values.”

Last June, her group raised more than $5,300 so that a small mosque in the city of Yogyakarta could install solar panels. More than 5,500 people donated funds, which went to the Al-Muharram Mosque, where congregants often sat in darkness because of chronic power shortages.

The new panels helped slash the mosque’s monthly power bill 75 percent to $1, its leader, Ananto Isworo, said. Congregants were already using harvested rainwater to cleanse themselves.

Mr. Ananto said many of his peers call him the “crazy ustadz,” or the “crazy Muslim teacher,” saying preaching about the environment has nothing to do with religion. He counters by saying there are roughly 700 verses in the Quran and dozens of hadiths, or sayings, by the Prophet Muhammad that speak about the environment. He cites Prophet Muhammad’s dictum: “God is kind and likes kindness, God is clean and likes cleanliness.”

“This is an order to preserve the environment by cleaning it,” Mr. Ananto said.

The Istiqlal Mosque is a testament to what can be achieved. Mr. Nasaruddin said installing 500 solar panels has lowered the mosque’s power bill by 25 percent. With slow-flow faucets and a water recycling system, worshipers use far less water to cleanse themselves before prayers.

It was the first place of worship in the world to be awarded a green building certificate by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. The Grand Imam said that he wants to help transform 70 percent of Indonesia’s 800,000 mosques into “eco-masjids,” or ecological mosques.

The Green Islam movement is also getting a push from Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, the country’s largest Muslim grassroots organizations, which fund schools, hospitals and social services. Nahdlatul Ulama has recruited Mr. Aak, the environmental activist, for its “spiritual ecology” program that uses Islamic teachings to drive environmental conservation.

One effort involves helping Islamic schools upgrade their waste management. Girls are encouraged to use reusable tampons, and the schools have a system that allows students to turn waste into things like organic fertilizer.

On a recent Tuesday, Mr. Aak led more than 50 sixth graders up a small hill on a Green Army mission. Many of the students were panting and sweating as they carried backpacks with plants poking out of them.

“Let’s pray to Allah and plant more often, because the Prophet Muhammad once said that even if you know that the end of the world is tomorrow and there are still seeds in the ground, he ordered: ‘Plant them,’” Mr. Aak said to them.

Stopping near the top of the hill, Mr. Aak knelt down to plant a banyan sapling. A breeze blew through, rustling the leaves of the nearby trees.

Hasya Nindita contributed reporting.

Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region. More about Sui-Lee Wee

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