Europe’s Growing Muslim Population from Pew Research Center

Image: Pew Resarch Center

The Pew Research Center continues its research on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe

Muslims are projected to increase as a share of Europe’s population – even with no future migration.

Here are the main headlines:

1. Even if all migration into Europe stopped immediately, the Muslim population would still be expected to rise from the current level of 4.9% to 7.4% by the year 2050
    
2. It all refugee flows stopped as of mid-2016, but regular migration continued (migration of those who come for reasons other than seeking asylum), Muslims could reach 11.2% of the population in 2050
    
3. If the record flow of refugees between 2014 and 2016 continued, Muslims could make up 14% of Europe’s population by 2050
    
4. Refugee flows of the last few years are extremely high compared with the historical average in recent decades, and already have begun to decline
    
5. Europe’s non-Muslims are projected to decline in total number in each of the scenarios above

Read the article in full on the Pew Research Center website.

Key finds on Muslims and Islam from Pew Research Center

Image: José Martín, Unsplash

The Pew Research Center has been compiling a number of recent reports, answering key questions about Muslims.

• There were 1.6 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010 – roughly 23% of the global population
   
• Although many countries in the Middle East-North Africa region are heavily Muslim, the region is home to only about 20% of the world’s Muslims
   
• In 2015, there were 3.3 million Muslims of all ages in the U.S., or about 1% of the U.S. population
   
• Our Pew's demographic projections estimate that Muslims will make up 2.1% of the U.S. population by the year 2050
   
• The two major factors behind the rapid projected growth of Islam are:
   
  • Muslims have more children than members of other religious groups. Around the world, each Muslim woman has an average of 3.1 children, compared with 2.3 for all other groups combined
     
  • Muslims are the youngest (median age of 23 years old in 2010) of all major religious groups, seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims. As a result, a larger share of Muslims already are, or will soon be, at the point in their lives when they begin having children
     
• Perceptions of Muslims varied across European nations:
   
  • Majorities in Hungary, Italy, Poland and Greece say they view Muslims unfavorably
     
  • Negative attitudes toward Muslims are much less common in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Northern and Western Europe
     
  • People who place themselves on the right side of the ideological scale are much more likely than those on the left to see Muslims negatively

The full report can be found on the Pew Research Center website.

Global distribution of Muslims from Pew Research Center

Image: Pew Resarch Center

The Pew Research Center has published research on the distribution of Muslims worldwide.

Here are the main headlines:

1. As of 2010, there were an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, making Islam the world’s second-largest religious tradition after Christianity
2.  Nearly two-thirds (62%) of Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region
3.  More Muslims live in India and Pakistan (344 million combined) than in the entire Middle East-North Africa region (317 million)
4. Middle East-North Africa region has the highest concentration of Muslims of any region of the world: 93% of its approximately 341 million inhabitants are Muslim
5. The country with the largest number (about 209 million) is Indonesia, where 87.2% of the population identifies as Muslim
6. Center estimates that by 2050 the number of Muslims worldwide will grow to 2.76 billion, or 29.7% of world’s population

Read the article in full on the Pew Research Center website.

The real stats behind 'Muslim Demographics'

INcontext have produced a helpful fact-check in response to the popular YouTube video, 'Muslim Demographics'.

Here are the main points to take away:

• Population growth in EU countries has been primarily driven by immigration, but the statistic includes all immigrants to EU countries, not just Muslims
   
• Muslims do not have fantastically high fertility rates: even in Algeria and Morocco, the two nations which send the largest numbers of Muslim immigrants to France, the fertility rate was 2.38 in 2008
   
• The Muslim population of Great Britain has grown, but not by 3000%, as the 1981 census did not survey respondents’ religious beliefs, on which the starting figure of 82,000 was based
   
• Muslim women in the Netherlands could not have accounted for '50% of all newborns', as they would have to be giving birth, on average, to about 14 to 16 times as many babies each as non-Muslim women
   
• The Belgian office of statistics points to a 2008 study which suggests the Muslim population  is 6%, so unlikely that it could account for 50% of births, as above
   
• The German government was misquoted as stating that it believed that Germany will become a Muslim state, although it is true that its population is in decline

Read the INcontext article in full, with detailed research from Snope and the Richard Knight at the BBC.

ComRes poll on refugees for BBC Newsnight

BBC NEWSNIGHT REFUGEE POLL

Poll of 1000 British adults about the migrant crisis for BBC Newsnight

Here are the key findings from the ComRes poll for the programme.

• 40% OF PUBLIC IN FAVOUR OF TAKING MORE REFUGEES
   
• Four in ten members of the public say that Britain should allow more refugees from countries such as Syria or Libya to come and live here
   
• Although taking more refugees is the most popular single option (40%), there is a combined majority against increasing numbers
   
• 31% say Britain should take fewer and an additional 26% say it should take about the same amount as it currently does
   
• There has also been a large shift in attitudes towards allowing migrants coming to Britain via an EU quota system

Read the poll and its findings in full on the ComRes website.