India to Have Majority of Muslims by 2050

American think tank Pew Research Centre has said that by 2050, India will have most Muslims in the world as they have the youngest median age (30) of all religious groups.

India will be the country with the world’s largest Muslim population by 2050 as they have the youngest median age of 30 among all religious groups. Muslims are the fastest-growing such group in the world said American think tank Pew Research Centre.

While Islam is currently the world’s second-largest religion after Christianity, it is now also the fastest-growing major religion. And if current demographic trends continue, the Muslim population is expected to exceed the number of Christians by the end of this century, Pew said.

At 62 percent, a majority of the Muslims globally live in the Asia-Pacific region. This included large populations in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey, Pew said. Indonesia is currently the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, but Pew Research Center projects that India will have that distinction by the year 2050, with more than 300 million Muslims.

There were 1.6 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010 – roughly 23% of the global population – according to a Pew estimate.

While the world’s population is projected to grow 35 percent in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 73 percent -to 2.8 billion in 2050. In fact, Muslims are the only major religious group projected to increase faster than the world’s population as a whole, the think tank said.