Muslims emerge as fastest-growing religious group – latest Pew Study reveals
Washington: The global population of Muslims increased by 347 million between 2010 and 2020, making Muslims the fastest-growing religious group within the period.
According to the findings of a latest Pew Research Centre study released on June 9, 2025, the share of the world’s Muslim population within the period rose by 1.8 percentage points, from 23.9 per cent to 25.6 per cent.
This also meant that the Muslim population increased from 1.7 billion in 2010 to 2 billion in 2020.
The study titled “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020” is an analysis of more than 2,700 sources of data, including national censuses, large-scale demographic surveys, general population surveys and population registers.
It showed that even though Christians remained the world’s biggest religious group with a population of 2.3 billion, its percentage of the world population decreased.
“The number of Christians rose by 122 million, reaching 2.3 billion. Yet, as a share of the world’s population, Christians fell 1.8 percentage points, from 30.6 per cent to 28.8 per cent.” The study report highlighted.
It indicated that the growth in the Muslim population was largely driven by the Muslims’ relatively young age structure and high fertility rate.
The Christian population decline, on the other hand, was attributed to widespread switching out of religion to a “religiously unaffiliated” status.
“Muslims grew twice as fast as the rest of the world’s population, which expanded by 10% during the same decade.
“Muslims and Hindus have been the least likely to gain or lose adherents from religious switching,” the report highlighted.
A further analysis on regional bases revealed that the rate of Muslim growth was the highest in North America, where Muslims numbered 5.9 million in 2020, an increase of 52 per cent, followed by sub-Saharan Africa, where Muslims grew to 369 million, representing an increase of 34 per cent.
The study highlighted that Muslims have a faster growth rate than the non-Muslim population, except in the Latin America-Caribbean region.
“In the Latin America-Caribbean region, which has the smallest Muslim population, the number of Muslims increased by 6 per cent, while the region’s non-Muslim population grew by 10 per cent,” the report stated.
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