Declining Muslim Birthrates Worldwide

by Bud Macfarlane

Leaders and academics in the Muslim world are apparently ignoring the astonishing fact that birthrates in every Muslim-majority country and Muslim populations elsewhere (including in Europe) have declined rapidly and dramatically in recent decades to non-replacement levels. One review I read of a book on the subject predicted this decline will lead to even more political instability in the Muslim world. Here are two links:

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/07/05/underpopulation-muslim-world-faces-devastating-fertility-decline/

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=891

I am reminded of a course I took at Notre Dame almost thirty years ago, The Catholic Vision, which became the basis for a book by the same name by the professor, Fr. Edward O'Connor, CSC, a wise Thomist who also happened to be my confessor. One of the few faithful Catholic theologians there at the time, the course was daring, modern, completely orthodox (and packed with students), consisting of an ambitious multi-disciplined survey of how the Catholic Church influenced and "sees" the world, including through history, science, sociology, philosophy, and culture.

While taking the course, I was taken aback by population figures showing that out of the (then) five billion souls on earth, over two billion were Christians, with roughly 1.1 billion of them being Catholics. Muslims were next at around 900 million, though the professor's main thrust was to point out the inexorable growth of Catholicism (in terms of world population) since the time of Christ. Today, there are roughly 7 billions souls on our planet (more than lived on earth in all of human history before 1960), and Christians still outnumber Muslims by roughly 2.3 billion to 1.6 billion, but Catholics have only increased to 1.2 billion since the 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations

For the first time in a long time, Catholicism is not the world's leading religion in terms of population, although one could say that all Christians are Catholics in the sense that they are our separated brothers and sisters in Christ. And Islam is by no means monolithic, consisting of numerous, often bitterly antagonistic and/or nationalistic sects. As I like to say, if any person, regardless of religious affiliation, merits heaven after their death, he will be pleasantly shocked to discover that heaven is Catholic, along with everyone there. Neither Mohammed, Buddha, nor a garden variety demonic pagan serpent-god will preside over any of our final judgments.

My view is that if there are seven billion souls on earth, we should strive to help all of them become Catholic to the greatest degree that God calls us. Through her prayers and sacrifices for the conversion of souls, my patron saint, Therese of Lisieux, after all, became the co-patron of Missionaries without ever leaving the convent. Most CatholiCity Citizens live in mission territory already; the souls we can influence live within ten square miles of our (mostly suburban) homes right here in the western world.

As for the population "contest" between religions, the brief Muslim surge since my ND days is now dramatically reversed. Their decline is as much about Muslims aping the selfish and modern aversion to the responsibility, sacrifices (and love and joys!) of raising children already embraced by mainstream non-Catholic denominations and sadly, the vast majority of nominal Catholics, a generation or two earlier.

I suspect Catholic populations will catch up eventually, because we always do over the long haul, and that happens because Catholicism is the only one, true faith. Those of us who have been given the gift of believing the whole of the Catholic vision will always want kids because we love kids. All good Catholics, in the deepest level, embrace the profound mystery of co-creating immortal souls as a sublime gift from God.

"To see oneself as a Catholic is to see oneself as a parent."
Joseph Wood

Islam is a false religion, and what little spiritual truth it espouses is often distorted. As a political movement over history, it is a tragic, endless story of oppression, expansion by war, utterly contemptible misogyny, bloodshed, as well as the antithesis of civil and religious liberty and equality. One of its few redeeming qualities was its welcoming of children. Now a lethal cancer, the Culture of Death, has spread throughout its body.

In recent decades, the Catholic Church has allied with Muslim countries to fight abortion, particularly against various United Nations initiatives. Pondering declining Muslim birthrates, I fear that even this tenuous bridge will inevitably collapse. A part of me is deeply saddened that all over the world, Muslims no longer want to have kids around.

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Bud Macfarlane, founder of CatholiCity.com and the Mary Foundation, is the author of three bestselling Catholic novels, available free of charge from Saint Jude Media. You can comment on his articles here.