In its newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, the Vatican claims Muslims now make up 19.2 per cent of the world’s population with Catholics at 17.4 per cent.In the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, wrote: “For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us.” However, he said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 per cent of the world’s population – or about two billion people.The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, estimated at about 1.3 billion.

Numbers for other major world religions include an estimated 785 million Hindus, 360 million Buddhists and 17 million Jews.

Mgr Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world’s population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

However, Bashir Maan, convenor of the Muslim Council of Scotland, said he thought that Islam was probably the largest religion in the world.

And he said it was not just down to higher birth rates, but because more people were converting to Islam.

“It is difficult to get a true figure of the number of Muslims in the world because trying to establish numbers in underdeveloped Muslim countries is very difficult.

“But if proper figures could be obtained from those countries then I think it would show Islam as the largest religion in the world.”

He said that people were attracted to the religion looking for “spiritualism”. He conceded that recent terror attacks had turned any people against Islam – but added the religion had benefited from other people studying the religion to find out its true message.

“These people are discovering a tolerant and accommodating religion,” he said.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said it was important to look beyond the figures.

“While it is a little unseemly to swap figures, a more realistic comparison would be between the Christian population of the world and the Muslim population, a comparison which would show the Christian world to be significantly bigger,” he said.

He added: “Christianity and Islam are both ‘religions of the Book’ – they share their origins in the Old Testament – and although there are some hot spots of tension in the world, there is also a wide area of common concern for Christians and Muslims, especially on such issues as the family and the sacredness of life.”

[article above taken from : http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Now-Islam--overtakes-.3929010.jp ]

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My first remark of this article was Alhamdulillahirrabbil’Alamin. Allah is the most Glorious. And Islam surely will win over other religions.

But at the second time I read this article, I felt little bit suspicious. And my first question is Why should they (Vatican newspaper) release this article? Doesn’t it mean they lowered their own religious? Doesn’t it mean they attract other people to convert to Islam? Or, Actually this is their own strategy to deceive the world?

Hmm..It’s very interesting. Has any Muslim Scholars said something about this press release by Vatican?

I just want to remind, especially myself, and all the Muslim sister and brother. Don’t we ever felt that we’ve won the “battle” over them-never ever feel satisfy of what we’ve(?) done, for instance this fact that bigger number of muslim over the catholics-. Actually, our real enemy is Al-Batil. And Al-batil will remain until the end of this world.

We may feel grateful to Allah, by say Alhamdulillah. But be careful, sometimes, praise will deceive us from our first mission/purpose. Don’t let this fact make us stop from doing good deeds. Don’t let this fact make us stop from do Dakwah to other people.

Because, it’ll probably that this article was released in order to pump up more Christian missionaries in every corner of muslim countries to convert more Muslims to be Christian, since the delta/difference between Muslim population and Christian population is only 1.8%.

Actually, I don’t feel convicted with this survey. Who did this survey? It wasn’t clearly defined.

I hope we will not feel satisfy too fast….Our journey is still very far far away guys..

NO one can guarantee us to enter HIS Jannah easily.

Be prepare!!

InsyaAllah

^__^

~just try to think~