Islam to overtake Christianity as world's largest religion by 2070, Pew study claims

Christianity is currently the world's largest religion, but that may soon change before the end of the century. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, the number of Muslims will soon exceed the number of Christians if current demographic trends continue.

As of 2010, Muslims comprised 1.6 billion of the world's population. The Pew Research Center estimated that by 2050, the Muslim population will have increased by 73 percent to 2.8 billion.

Islam's rapid growth is due in part to high birth rates among Muslims. The study revealed that Muslim women across the world have an average of 3.1 children, compared with 2.3 for all the other religious groups combined.

The report also indicated that followers of Islam on average are the youngest of all major religious groups, seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims. This means that a larger number of Muslims "already are, or will soon be, at the point in their lives when they begin having children," according to Pew.

Pew's demographic projections estimated that Muslims will comprise 2.1 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, surpassing those who identify as religious Jews as the second largest faith group in the country. There are currently 3.3 million Muslims in the U.S., about one percent of the American population.

The Muslim population in Europe is also expected to have a significant increase. The polling group projected that 10 percent of its population will be Muslims by 2050.

India is projected to become the country with the world's largest Muslim population by 2050. It is expected that more than 300 million Muslims will be living in India by that year while remaining as a Hindu-majority country.

The report also revealed that most people in countries with significant Muslim populations hold an unfavorable view of the Islamic State terror group. Virtually all respondents in Lebanon and 94 percent in Jordan viewed ISIS unfavorably. In Pakistan, 64 percent of the respondents do not offer an opinion about the terror group.

Most Muslims say that suicide bombings and other forms of violence committed in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified, including 92 percent in Indonesia and 91 percent in Iraq. A 2011 survey in the U.S. indicated that 86 percent of Muslims believe that such tactics are rarely or never justified.