If you want to reduce the point of this thread to my person, indeed, all I know is that I know nothing. But I think that, by asking questions (and initiating a ‘great’ debate), we can try to avoid the dogmas and seek the truth instead.
One of many, given the slowing of one trend makes another trend grow faster in comparison. Islam is also secularizing, but as far as I know not as quickly as the West for various political reasons. This is just a guess on my part, though.
Some fairly good responses to this, but I think some fundamentals are still being overlooked.
The original post, when “genericized” a bit for clarity, says essentially that two things happened (allegedly) at the same general time (secularization of governments and the spread of Islam), and therefore the OP wonders if one is causing the other.
No effort is made to show any causational MECHANISM. Therefore the entire structure of the query, is no more sensible than noting that the sky usually appears to be blue, and at the same time, that everyone grows old and dies; and therefore asking if the sky is blue because people die, or vice versa.
Looking at the two isolated items themselves, the expansion of nominal Muslims, and the expansion of nominal atheists, it is absurd to pretend that the one might “cause” the other on their face. Because the claim would be, that because people are LESS likely to believe in a deity at all, that they will therefore believe in a different version of the deity they don’t believe in.
It also seems obvious to me, that the only reason to ask such an obviously nonsensical question, is in hopes that someone who wants to oppose Islam, might be persuaded to join an effort to try to force atheists to pretend to be believers, out of fear of terrorism (or some such).
Finally, there is an inherent underlying sense in the entire notion, that “isms” are actually akin to transmissible diseases. That people can “catch” Islamic Fundamentalism, because they are no longer properly inoculated against it, having “lost their Christianity” somewhere.
People don’t “catch” atheism, or Islam, or Mormanism. And secularism isn’t a belief system, it is an idea to arrange governance to be independent of religious beliefs, rather than dependent upon them, made because the people who chose it, no matter how strong their own religious beliefs are, thought it would make the state better overall.
Actually, if you dispassionately study the past, you will learn that secularism did NOT spread, as a way to DEFEAT religion, or to eliminate it. It actually has nothing to do with atheism, though of course, atheists are more likely to support secularism than religious people are.I’d rather we stopped pointing fingers at people who aren’t religious. Even if enrollment is in decline in Christian organizations and increasing in Islamic organizations, which is questionable, there’s no reason to drag people who aren’t members of either into the middle as suspects. Maybe Christianity just needs to work on its brand a little harder rather than look around for someone else to blame?
My personal religious position does not social and political implications. It’s those with the firm beliefs they simple must share and enforce that create the issues.
Secularism might give fire-and-brimstone preachers a talking point—“If we don’t return to Allah and his prophet, our children will end up like the people in the secular West: never praying, having orgies, and allowing dogs and cats to live together!”
That’s not to say that people should change what they believe because of how others might react.
These responses make a lot of sense to me. (And the thread-title question reminds me of the way so many social trends used to be blamed on Creeping Communism–to the point of absurdity.)
Is Atheism fueling the growth of Islam?
Unless atheists are suddenly turning to Islam, which means they are no longer Atheists
how could it?
If i have 300 million people
200 million are catholic
50 million are Muslin
25 million are Jews
25 million are Atheists
Unless the atheists are converting to Islam i don’t see how they would be the cause.
I’d more believe if you told me that the Muslims had 6.8 children per family and the Catholics only had 3 the Jews had 2 and the Atheists only had 1.
That would at least make some sense?
I don’t know whether or not there is a connection between the rising numbers of non-believers and the rising numbers of Muslims.
I do not militate for the expansion of any community of believers or non-believers and I am not interested in witnessing an increase or a decrease in the numbers of any of these group members.
I believe it is possible that one participate in a debate without holding a partisan view by seeking information and arguments on some controversial issue and by testing all these out.
I am aware that statistics can be misleading evidence. I am not a specialist in sociology or religion and sometimes find it hard to tell between the simple and the simplistic when analyzing arguments put forth in certain discussions. I am skeptical of the ‘obvious’ but I am willing to listen to other people’s arguments so that I may learn something. I am skeptical of a direct connection between Western secularism (and/or atheism) and the growth of Islam, but I can’t wait to hear people’s opinions on it. I am equally skeptical of ‘simple’ explanations, such as superior fertility among Muslim families – it reminds me of another ‘factual’ statement: The Bible tops the list of the most read books in the world. – but I am willing to follow this path of the argument so that we can see where it may lead.
Here are two sources internet sources:
The first source gives three possible reasons for the fact that Muslims are the world’s fastest growing religious group: 1) high fertility; 2) youngest median age; 3) little religious switching among their ranks: […] religious switching, which is expected to hinder the growth of some other religious groups, is not expected to have a negative net impact on Muslims. By contrast, between 2010 and 2050, Christianity is projected to have a net loss of more than 60 million adherents worldwide through religious switching.
The second source shows that the numbers of non-believers in the USA is rising, with Christianity losing many adherents and Islam being less affected: the data clearly show that part of the reason the religious “nones” have grown rapidly in recent decades is that they continue to be the single biggest destination of movement across religious boundaries. Nearly one-in-five American adults (18%) were raised in a religion and are now unaffiliated, compared with just 4% who have moved in the other direction. In other words, for every person who has left the unaffiliated and now identifies with a religious group more than four people have joined the ranks of the religious “nones.” […] Driven primarily by the losses experienced by Catholicism and mainline Protestantism, Christianity as a whole loses more adherents than it gains via religious switching. […] Hindus, Muslims and Jews are the three religious traditions that retain the largest shares of the adherents raised within their group.
What do you make of these?
The thought at the core of my observations about all this, is that I don’t believe in “magic.” What I mean by that is, that after years of intense study, I have ALWAYS found that when something happens, whatever it is, there is a recognizable MECHANISM which makes it happen.
In the case of religious affiliation, there is a MECHANISM for why people change or adopt (or say they adopt) a given belief system. It doesn’t happen because the existence of Islam or whatever, inherently CAUSES them to either change, or to remain with a belief system.
A certain amount of what you quoted from the usually estimable Pugh studies, are more point-of-view considerations, than anything else. Most of what I see there are statistics which are not explained, just noted. More people openly leaving Christian-related religions than are leaving Islamic systems is reported.
One thing which might be pivotal, I don’t see a mention of here: the difference between ACTUAL religious adherence and loyalty, and NOMINAL religious adherence. It is clear to me, that there are a lot of FUNCTIONAL atheists in amongst the membership of all religions, because not that many members follow through with all the religious strictures as enthusiastically as they would if they were “true believers.”
Note from the linked Pugh studies: the one on religious switching in particular, seems to focus on the US alone, and has an interesting element. In the chart comparing people leaving and entering various religions, it says that Protestant Christian and Evangelical Christian growth, far outstrips Muslim growth, when it comes to people joining and actually "growing" the religious group itself.
This leads to another thought: how much of the growth of Islam is linked to the inability of it’s members to GET AWAY with leaving, owing to their circumstances? here in the US, where Muslims CAN leave, without the bulk of the surrounding culture shunning them as a consequence, there are as many leaving the faith, as are joining it (according to the chart).
This also might explain why it can APPEAR that a rise in atheism is linked to all this: where people are ALLOWED to say they really aren’t religious, they are more likely to say that they are not. But that doesn’t mean that secularism CAUSES people to lose their beliefs, it only ALLOWS them to admit that they have done so.
One more possible related point: Islam is currently being used in many more places around the world, not as a religion alone, but as a tool of cohesion to unite people against whoever is in power. Communism was once feared in the same way, because people who were tired of international corporations moving into their lands and overturning their way of life, were told that Communism would allow them to throw the foreigners out, and take their lives back. They didn’t claim allegiance to communism just because they liked it, so much as because they wanted the help of other communists to oppose their other enemies.
A couple points:
I think you will find that, in general, more advanced societies and more educated families tend to produce fewer children.
The percentage of Muslims in the countries you identified is around:
UK 5%
France 7%
Germany 2% - 5%
Sweden 5%
Roughly about the same percentage of Asians in the US. The main difference is that European countries tend to be a lot worse at assimilating other cultures than Americans. Which is sort of why we have an “America” in the first place.
Only about 3% of all Muslims live in Europe or the Americas. The rest are in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, where they total around a billion people.
IOW, the “spread” of Muslim in Europe is very low and I would imagine much of it is due to immigration out of war-torn countries. In the USA, it’s negligible.