The al-Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut. (Credit: Matthieu Karam/L'Orient-Le Jour)
A report from the Pew Research Center, a U.S.-based research center, published on June 9, examines the evolution of the global religious landscape between 2010 and 2020. The study describes the world’s religious composition in 2020 and its evolution compared to 2010, focusing on seven categories: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, people belonging to other religions and those not affiliated with any religion.
The main takeaway is as follows: During this decade, Christians remained the world's largest religious group but did not keep pace with global population growth, while Muslims experienced the fastest growth during the study period.
Lebanon is one of only two countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, along with the sultanate of Oman, where a religious group has substantially changed, with the Muslim population share increasing by 5 points to 67.8 percent.
Following an analysis of more than 2,700 censuses and surveys related to religious demographics, the Pew Research Center provides detailed information that the number of Christians worldwide increased by 122 million, reaching 2.3 billion. However, the share of Christians in the global population decreased by 1.8 points, reaching 28.8 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of Muslims increased by 347 million, more than all other religions combined. Thus, the share of the global population that is Muslim increased by 1.8 points to 25.6 percent.
The increase in the global Muslim population is explained, according to the study, by the overall population growth in countries where Muslims are concentrated. The report highlights three countries where the proportion of Muslims increased substantially (by at least 5 points): Kazakhstan, Benin and Lebanon.
In the Middle East and North Africa region, Christians constitute the largest minority group in the region, representing 3 percent of its population, and are heavily concentrated in Egypt.
Hindus, Buddhists, people without religious affiliation and followers of other religions — including a large number of Druze living in Lebanon and Israel — each represent less than 1 percent of the region’s population.
Lebanon and Oman are the only two countries in the region where there has been a substantial change of at least 5 points regarding a religious group in their overall population.
In Lebanon, the Muslim population share increased to 67.8 percent (an increase of 5.5 points), while the Christian population decreased by 5.9 points to 27.9 percent, according to the study, which does not distinguish between the different branches of Islam represented in the country (Sunni, Shiite, Druze) or those of Christianity.
According to the report, this change is explained by the arrival of Muslim refugees from Syria. “Lebanon hosts the second-largest number of Syrian refugees after Turkey and has the highest concentration of Syrians relative to the size of its population — about one in five inhabitants of Lebanon is a Syrian refugee.”
But the decline in the Christian share of the Lebanese population is also due to a decrease in the absolute number of Christians residing in the country, the report indicates. The subject is explosive in Lebanon, as the country lacks up-to-date statistics on its demographics or religious distribution. In 2024, a study by former minister Charbel Nahas estimated that the Lebanese might represent only 52 percent of the entire population living in Lebanon.
“The convergence movement between Christians and Muslims will continue,” said Conrad Hackett, the lead author of the report, to the Washington Post, “with Islam set to become the world’s largest religion in the years ahead unless trend lines shift.”
To reach these conclusions, the research center examined data including fertility rates, age distribution of religious groups in each country and religious change rates. Its analyses cover 201 countries and territories with at least 100,000 inhabitants in 2010 or 2020, accounting for 99.98 percent of the global population.
The Pew Research Center, based in Washington, conducts opinion polls, demographic studies and research on various topics such as politics, technology, religion and science.
