Muslims by the numbers: 7 facts from the 2020 count

Pew counts 2.0 billion Muslims in 2020, a rise of 21% in ten years. The rest of the world grew by about 10% over the same period.^[1] Muslims now make up 25.6% of humanity, up from about 23.8% in 2010, and the increase of 347 million is larger than the increase of all other religious groups put together.^[2]

Pew calls Muslims the fastest-growing religious group of the decade. A count of that size has margins of error, and Pew draws it from census and survey data that differ in quality from country to country.

Pew attributes the increase mainly to natural increase, because Muslims have a young age structure and higher fertility than most groups.^[2] Switching religion has a small effect on the totals. Muslims are one of the few groups in which more people join than leave, but the numbers who switch in either direction are low.^[2]

The report therefore gives no support to the claim that Muslim growth comes from mass conversion, and none to the claim that Muslims are leaving in large numbers.

Asia and the Pacific hold 59% of the world’s Muslims. The Middle East and North Africa hold about one in five.^[1] A third of all Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan or India, and Indonesia alone has about 240 million, roughly 12% of the total.^[1]

Western debates often use “Muslim” and “Arab” as if they were the same word. The numbers show a religion whose centre of population sits in South and Southeast Asia.

India has 213 million Muslims, which is 15% of its population.^[1] The ten countries with the most Muslims together hold 1.3 billion people, or 65% of the world total, and nine of the ten are Muslim-majority states.^[1]

India is the exception on that list. One of the largest Muslim communities on earth lives as a minority under a non-Muslim majority.

Sub-Saharan Africa has 369 million Muslims, up 34% since 2010. They are 33% of the region’s population and hold 18% of the world’s Muslims, two points more than in 2010.^[1]

Pew also records cases where the Muslim share fell. In Tanzania, Muslim women averaged 4.6 children against 5.5 for all women, and the Muslim share fell by 6 points.^[1] Higher fertility is therefore not a rule for every Muslim population.

Muslims make up 6% of Europe’s population, up 0.7 points from 2010.^[1] North America has 5.9 million Muslims, which is a rise of 52% and the fastest growth of any region, from a small base.^[1]

In Sweden the Muslim share rose by 4 points, in Austria by 3 and in Germany by 1. Pew links the modest increases in those three countries partly to Syrian refugees.^[1] Pew adds that Muslim fertility in several European countries is higher than average.

Christians fell below half of the population in the United Kingdom (49%) and France (46%) during the decade, and the Netherlands now has a religiously unaffiliated majority (54%).^[2] In the United States the Christian share dropped from 78.3% to 64.0%, while the unaffiliated share rose from 16.5% to 29.7%.^[2]

A Muslim share of 6% in Europe sits against a falling Christian share and a growing unaffiliated one. The largest shift in Western religion over the decade was the rise of the unaffiliated.