UNITED STATES, February 2011: The world’s Muslim population is likely to increase by about 35 percent in the next two decades, going from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion, according to new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Globally, the Muslim population is projected to increase at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades–an average annual growth rate of 1.5 percent for Muslims, compared with 0.7 percent for non-Muslims.
Current trends, if they continue, suggest that Muslims will make up 26.4 percent of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4 percent of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion. While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades.