U.S AMBASSADOR: ISLAM THE FASTEST GROWING RELIGION IN U.S
“Right now Islam is the fastest religion growing in United Stated and we have a very large Muslim student there,” said the Ambassador in his visit to Assidiqiyyah Islamic Boarding School, Jakarta, Saturday morning (1/6).
The man who had ever been in Turkey as ambassador also stated that both Indonesia and US have many similarities that can be a power of change.
“Indonesia and United Stated of America have many similarities. Both of them are big countries. They are also democratic countries. The other things are we have a multicultural background of the residents,” he said.
“Multicultural background can be the power of change of a country and we are doing it. I am sure Indonesia can manage their multicultural background as a potency to reach the success,” he added.
Islam in United Stated
According to the latest U.S. Religion Census released on May, 2012, the fastest growing religion in America is Islam. The cencus data compiled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, and the results were released by the Association of Religion Data Archives.
From the year 2000 to 2010, the census found that the number of Muslims living inside the United States increased by about 1 million to 2.6 million – a stunning increase of 66.7 percent. That is an astounding rate of growth. Meanwhile, most Christian denominations had rates of growth that were far below the overall rate of population growth in the United States, and some Christian denominations actually lost members.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion by number of conversions each year: “Although the religion began in Arabia, by 2002 80% of all believers in Islam lived outside the Arab world. In the period 1990-2000, approximately 12.5 million more people converted to Islam. Part of the book’s quote can be seen online from this extract from Google Books.This was again shown in the 2005, 50th anniversary edition of Guinness Book of World Records, although the number of conversions was not mentioned this time.
However the report also included a statement saying “While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030.
The report also made reference to the fact that Muslims are estimated to make up 23.4% of the total global population in 2010 (out of a total of 6.9 billion people) and that by 2030 Muslims will represent about 26.4% of the global population (out of a total of 7.9 billion people). (L/P04/P01/P03)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
