# Will the world be mostly Muslim in 50 years? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 18, 2014, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806 "2014-09-18T08:34:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bibliothecarius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@Bibliothecarius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bibliothecarius)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/1 "2014-09-18T08:34:23Z")
Posting this in GQ as I’m hoping for a factual answer from someone more knowledgeable in demographics, statistics, sociology, etc than I am. This video gets paraded around the internet every now and again: [Muslim Demographics](http://www.youtube.com/embed/6-3X5hIFXYU) The gist of it is that Muslims are giving birth to far more children than all other cultures and immigrating to Western countries in record numbers, while the birth rate in Western countries has more or less dropped to a rate that will ensure the decline of those cultures within a few decades. In short, this guy claims that within a few decades Islamic culture will be the predominant culture on this planet. **Not interested in starting a fight or a religious debate.** Just wondering if there is any truth to the claims made in this video, or if it’s just the usual unsubstantiated fear-mongering? It’s obviously intended to be fear-mongering but is there any factual basis for anything claimed in this video in the first place? (Trying to reassure my overly paranoid Islamophobic mother who sent me the link that it’s all made up crap, like most of the videos she watches online.) ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/2 "2014-09-18T09:17:59Z")
“Mostly Muslim” as in more than 50% of the world’s population being Muslim? If so, no, that most certainly won’t happen. Or “mostly Muslim” as in “biggest religion on the planet”? No, not that either. Islam is still some 600-800 million people behind Christianity, and it’s not growing _that_ fast. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/3 "2014-09-18T09:49:43Z")
A rather huge pair of flaws in that argument: it’s built on the assumption that present trends will continue indefinitely. And, that every child of a Muslim parent will automatically be Muslim themselves. Islam isn’t a genetic trait. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/4 "2014-09-18T10:26:31Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > A rather huge pair of flaws in that argument: it’s built on the assumption that present trends will continue indefinitely. And, that every child of a Muslim parent will automatically be Muslim themselves. Islam isn’t a genetic trait. Not to pick an argument but… My understanding is that if you are born to Muslim parents, then by default you are Muslim. It would be interesting to see statistics on how many “fall out” of Islam after being born into it. I would rather suspect, regardless of what happens currently, more and more will leave Islam as “western culture” spreads. Do also note - how many Buddhists and Taoists are there around the world? And finally - it would be important to note, based on the discussions that I have had with Muslims, Islam is both a religion and a code for living life / govt - much more so than Christianity is. (i.e in Islam there is not the same concept of secularism that we see in western democracies) ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/5 "2014-09-18T10:28:05Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > My understanding is that if you are born to Muslim parents, then by default you are Muslim. There are some flaws in your understanding. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/6 "2014-09-18T10:36:55Z")
That was 7.31 minutes of my life I will never get back. One: It was unsupported claim after unsupported claim, with an obviously biased agenda. By the 40 second mark, I wasn’t believing a single one of the statistics. Two: It appeared to be conflating the Middle Eastern and Eurasian diaspora with Islam. Here in SE Michigan we have the[largest](http://michiganradio.org/post/what-explains-michigans-large-arab-american-community) [concentration](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Middle_Eastern_people_in_Metro_Detroit) of Arab Americans in the country, by far. About half of them are Christian/Chaldean. > [@](#): > > Nationally, Arab Americans are roughly half Muslims and half Christians. Metro Detroit also has a number of smaller Arab communities, many of them majority Christian—like the growing Chaldean community in Sterling Heights. I don’t know how that extrapolates to the rest of the world. I’ve seen similar questionable claims made about Hispanics in the US, and even IF I believed them, why would it matter to me? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/7 "2014-09-18T18:46:29Z")
Several points - The excess number of young arabs, the high birth rate - generally is a “feature” of poverty. regardless of race, creed, or geography the general demographic trend is that as people and society in general get rich, they have less children. People can save for their retirement instead of needing children to provide for them; children start to cost real money to raise. Most western countries and Japan are actually reproducing below replacement levels. There’s no reason to think the same won’t be true of both Moslem immigrant population to the west (once they integrate enough to match the general population for income) and also the Arab countries as they develop. Places like moslem Indonesia are also climbing the economic ladder - birth rate has dropped from 5.5 in the 70’s to 2.37 today. Pakistan, still a bit further behind, went from 6.5 to 3.3 - still above replacement level (2) but down significantly. Turkey, fairly rich, has gone from 6 to 2.06 Plus, maybe not counting some areas of the USA, as populatons get richer they also tend to spend less time and effort on religion. As for places that don’t develop economically - how much more holding power do they still have? Pakistan has 180M population. Where would they put another 180M? How would they feed them? Bangladesh has 177M - do you think there’s room or food for double that? I’ve been to Egypt, and 80M people are incredibly crowded in there. here’s a list of the Moslem population (and percent of the population) for various areas and countries. Which ones do you think can double their population? But then, to go from 23% of the world population to 50%, everyone else would have to pretty much stop growing. World Total 1,619,314,000 23.4% South & Southeast Asia 1,005,507,000 24.8% Middle East-North Africa 321,869,000 91.2% Sub-Saharan Africa 242,544,000 29.6% Europe 44,138,000 6.0% Indonesia Indonesia 204,847,000 88.1% Pakistan Pakistan 178,097,000 96.4% India India 177,286,000 14.6% Bangladesh Bangladesh 148,607,000 90.4% Egypt Egypt 80,024,000 94.7% Nigeria Nigeria 75,728,000 47.9% Iran Iran 74,819,000 99.7% Turkey Turkey 74,660,000 98.6% ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/8 "2014-09-18T20:10:02Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > I would rather suspect, regardless of what happens currently, more and more will leave Islam as “western culture” spreads. What makes you think that? > [@md2000](#): > > as populatons get richer they also tend to spend less time and effort on religion. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/9 "2014-09-18T23:45:35Z")
It’s not going to happen. There are currently about 7,260,000,000 people in the world. Of this total, about 1,670,000,000 are Muslims. In order for Muslims to reach a majority, they would have to have 3,920,000,000 children by 2050 - an explosive population growth rate that no society has ever produced. And even that would only work if no non-Muslim had a child between now and 2050. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/10 "2014-09-19T01:19:31Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > There are some flaws in your understanding. [There are?](http://islamqa.info/en/165492) > [@](#): > > With regard to the Muslim who was born to Muslim parents turning away from the religion of Islam when he grows up, this is an important matter, the discussion of which will be addressed in the following points: > > 1. > > Muslim children follow their Muslim parents. Hence the one who has two Muslim parents is deemed to be a Muslim, so he may inherit or be inherited from, and if he dies he is to be washed and buried, the funeral prayer is to be offered for him and he is to be buried in the Muslim graveyard. And in the Hereafter he will be one of the people of Paradise, according to scholarly consensus. > > The Shaafa‘i scholar an-Nawawi (may Allah have mercy on him) said: The one whose parents, or one of them, are Muslim is also regarded as a Muslim with regard to rulings concerning the hereafter and worldly matters. End quote from Sharh Muslim, 16/208 > > The Hanbali scholar Ibn Qudaamah (may Allah have mercy on him) said: The child follows his parents in both realms (i.e., this world and the hereafter). If the parents are of different religions, then he must follow the one who is Muslim, such as the child of a Muslim man from a kitaabi (i.e., Jewish or Christian) woman. End quote from al-Mughni, 10/91. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/11 "2014-09-19T01:21:42Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > What makes you think that? > > Cite? I don’t think - it is an unsupported suspiscion, that as education and understanding of science improves, so belief in, and following of, a sky god tends to fall. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/12 "2014-09-19T01:45:35Z")
You can’t take a current trend and simply assume it continues indefinitely. It would be like looking at the growth of disco in the 1980s, and tried to extrapolate how popular it will be in the 21st century. (Record sales for disco by 2014 will be over four billion per year!) Islam is a rapidly growing religion, but that’s mainly because it’s the dominate religion in the fastest growing countries. As these countries industrialize, their growth will slow down. In the beginning of the 20th century, it was Christianity that was growing the fastest because Europe and the Americas were growing quite rapidly. Actually, the fastest growing _religion_ might be [Pastafarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster). I hear that its religious adherents are doubling every six months. At that rate, in a mere 20 years, there will be over a trillion adherents! ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/13 "2014-09-19T05:07:33Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > [There are?](http://islamqa.info/en/165492) Yes. What you quoted does not represent all of Islam. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/14 "2014-09-19T09:54:46Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > [There are?](http://islamqa.info/en/165492) So what? I’m quite sure that the Catholic church would still count me as Catholic, having received all the relevant sacraments (especially baptism). But I’m clearly not, and the same would apply to an apostate from Islam, independently from what the religious authorities of one’s former creed are thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/15 "2014-09-19T10:15:49Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Yes. What you quoted does not represent all of Islam. To expand: As has been posted many times in many threads by many people who know of what they speak, Islam does not have an equivalent of a pope to dictate doctrine for all Muslims. Just like Christianity, Islam has a fair number of sects. Some of those sects do not consider the other sects to be part of Islam. To further complicate matters, there are a number of schools or traditions of Islamic jurisprudence and some of those schools contradict some of the others. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/16 "2014-09-19T11:52:50Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > So what? I’m quite sure that the Catholic church would still count me as Catholic, having received all the relevant sacraments (especially baptism). But I’m clearly not, and the same would apply to an apostate from Islam, independently from what the religious authorities of one’s former creed are thinking. My gf’s ex-husband was catholic. We’ve been living together about ten years, or 120 months. Every one of those months the Catholic Church he attended sends us an envelope full of envelopes (for donations or something?). 120 times they’ve sent them, 120 times I’ve thrown them out. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/17 "2014-09-19T13:20:27Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > So what? I’m quite sure that the Catholic church would still count me as Catholic, having received all the relevant sacraments (especially baptism). But I’m clearly not, and the same would apply to an apostate from Islam, independently from what the religious authorities of one’s former creed are thinking. > [@kayaker](#): > > My gf’s ex-husband was catholic. We’ve been living together about ten years, or 120 months. Every one of those months the Catholic Church he attended sends us an envelope full of envelopes (for donations or something?). 120 times they’ve sent them, 120 times I’ve thrown them out. Exactly. 16 years of good catholic education have essentially cured me of religion. I believe something similar applies in Quebec, where IIRC the stats say 80% of “catholics” in a predominantly catholic society - don’t attend church. Church attendance, lip service to religion, social pressure have melted away very quickly across much of the western world in the last century. Generally there is a correlation between being rich for a few generations and lack of zeal for the church. I have no reason to believe the Moslem world will be different. The Muslim threat of death for apostasy applies if you change your professed religion. I don’t know if there’s even a Moslem equivalent of the Catholic dogma that missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin. Obviously if you skip prayers you’re being a bad boy, but it’s not a stoning offense. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/18 "2014-09-19T13:27:10Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Yes. What you quoted does not represent all of Islam. Beyond that, you don’t go around counting people as something just because a religion “claims” them. You count based on self-identification. Hindus believe all religious beliefs are facets of the same basic truth, so all religious people are Hindus. Extending your logic ( **benganmo** ), 95% of the world’s population is therefore Hindu. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/19 "2014-09-20T15:51:40Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > My gf’s ex-husband was catholic. We’ve been living together about ten years, or 120 months. Every one of those months the Catholic Church he attended sends us an envelope full of envelopes (for donations or something?). 120 times they’ve sent them, 120 times I’ve thrown them out. The envelopes are to put your Sunday collection check in, which is deposited in the basket they pass around every Sunday Mass. It is a convenience. Why don’t you call the parish office, and tell them to stop sending them? They aren’t being sent from the Vatican. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806/20 "2014-09-20T15:53:31Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Exactly. 16 years of good catholic education have essentially cured me of religion. I believe something similar applies in Quebec, where IIRC the stats say 80% of “catholics” in a predominantly catholic society - don’t attend church. Church attendance, lip service to religion, social pressure have melted away very quickly across much of the western world in the last century. Generally there is a correlation between being rich for a few generations and lack of zeal for the church. I have no reason to believe the Moslem world will be different. > > The Muslim threat of death for apostasy applies if you change your professed religion. I don’t know if there’s even a Moslem equivalent of the Catholic dogma that missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin. Obviously if you skip prayers you’re being a bad boy, but it’s not a stoning offense. Missing Mass is not a mortal sin. Doesn’t sound like you even learned what was being taught. And do you seriously believe that most Muslims fear being hunted down and killed if they change religions, if they are not living in one of the fanatic nations (where they could be killed for a lot of other things as well)? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-world-be-mostly-muslim-in-50-years/698806.md?page=2)