| For lack of data, no one knows precisely how many humans are roaming the good, old earth. Demographics rely much on rational estimates, other times on fraud. With religion—contentious for its political underpinnings—silence or subjective projections prevail. A common impression is that Christianity, led by Catholicism, is world’s dominant religion, followed by Islam. Let us operate with this thinking for our purposes here and see where the future leads. |
Deducible facts show that Islam is the religion of the future, the faith that will survive the aggressive secularism currently sweeping through the world. Already stunted in the West, in a few decades Christianity will face a significant decline in Africa, currently its most auspicious foothold.
Islam’s dominance will derive from three main factors: migration, anti-globalism, and population growth.
From their original base in the Middle East, Muslims have been migrating Westwards in droves, driven by economic longing, education, or conflict. The exodus intensified in the past two decades, so much that Muslims now have a significant population in the UK and some other European countries. Scenes of Friday prayers in parts of the UK mirror those of the Middle East—streets agog with a surge of adherents. Conversely, European churches are getting emptier on Sundays, frequented mostly by senior citizens. And while Islamic countries encourage the migration of their citizens, not one of them offers citizenship to foreigners in their own lands. A recent exception is that of the United Arab Emirates, which has started giving permanent residence to a select cast of immigrants.
Many Muslim immigrants do not culturally integrate in their host countries. While many of their Christian counterparts soon become atheists and agnostics—or at least completely shun churchgoing in the West—Muslims tend to live, even if in theory, in Islamic communities, where they deepen their faith and the vision of cultural purity despite the allure of Western liberalism. They accept a globalization that softens entry into Western spaces but protect their own distinct cultures and values. In fact, some Western women, who once regarded the hijab as a symbol of women’s subjugation, adorn it for fashion. Of course, globalization does not imply absolute cultural homogeneity; yet it is not expected to be a one-way traffic.
While governments and individuals, including Christians, are bent on population control, Islamic societies remain open to polygamy and population growth. In all, they are increasing in number, spreading out into the world, while keeping their faiths strong and global. Rather than proselytization, Islam grows by institutionalization. Perhaps evangelism is no longer the best approach to propagate a faith in our current times.
Islam’s rise will also be helped by a deep-seated Western grudge against Christianity, whose dark past has not been forgiven. Some Western liberals even embrace Islam merely to spite Christians and have been politically supportive of the former’s strategic spread. But further to Islam’s advantage is the fact of Christianity’s present-day shortcomings.
In Africa, once regarded as the future hope of the Christian faith, two factors are quietly deepening religious apathy. Enlightenment through social media has unlocked a critical mass of youngsters shooting down long-held Biblical beliefs. More than that, the activities of pastorpreneurs continue to assail the faith’s moral fibre, a situation worsened by a congregation contemptuous of secular thought and philosophy.
Many Christians read no further than their pastors’ motivational books and nothing on apologetics, the philosophy field that defends faith through logical and intellectual reasoning. In fact, some dismiss such learning as “worldly.” European Christians made the same mistake until it was too late; now they hold secular debates with atheists, using the latter’s instrument of de-conversion—science and logic—to arm their flock.
Christian parents still think their children will “believe” simply because it is commanded in the Bible. Millennials are not much the kind of people to believe without question, let alone the children they will raise. A lot of them are irreligious, only that their families do not know yet. They are unlikely to propagate the faith or raise children in it.
Africa’s explosive Christian presence is merely two or three generations from facing what struck the Western church, barring adherents who will stay religious from the effects of dystopian states. In contrast, secularism isn’t making the same inroads into Islamic settings—partly because apostacy in Islam has more severe consequences. But beyond that, the culture of Islamic purity is embraced not only by Islam’s political elite but also by a large section of the youth population. Islam is equally a political system, which means adherence has benefits beyond spiritual motivations. That locks different generations in already, towards a more global future.
Democracy is rooted in numbers, in votes, which can usher in a global Islamic hegemony one great nation per time. It is not clear what the implication will be, as life often sows the seeds of subversion and balance even within homogenous systems. Yet the psychological import of domination can hardly be wished away.
For Christians who may be offended by this analysis, know that this is merely the wisdom of man—speculative at best, foolish at worst. If it helps, many of us reading this article may be dead before its prediction fails or is fulfilled.
It appears that half the future belongs to Islam, the other half to irreligion. But unlike Islam, irreligion is not as organized and committed to power. Islam’s political machine is hard to halt: population growth in the Middle East, Africa and the West; fewer religious dropouts; state power in its strongholds; and enjoyment of liberal support. The Christian faith would need all four to stay politically relevant in the future—except that many of its members, spiritual rather than pragmatic, despise such politics as they do apologetics, even as most Christian youth have little interest in perpetuating the faith in the next generation.
This story first appeared in Nigeria Abroad
