Islam predicted to surpass Christianity as world's largest religion by 2070

Islam is predicted to be the word's largest religion by 2070, researchers have claimed.

Christianity which is still the most popular global religion is expected to lose its top ranking in France, Australia and United Kingdom before the shift takes a more dramatic turn.

The religious research, carried out by the Pew Research Centre, based in Washington DC US, came to this conclusion because of the higher fertility rate of Islam's followers.

Professor David Voas of population studies at England's Institute for Social and Economic Research, stated that: "The very rapid growth of population, combined with limited opportunities even for the educated young people, but particularly for less educated ones, has created social and therefore political tensions and that has fueled things like immigration to Western countries, political upheaval."

It is predicted that both Islam and Christianity will have an equal amount of followers by 2050, before Islam now overtakes the religion over the next 20 years.

By 2050, the report also reels out that the population of Earth counted as 7 billion in 2010 - will have grown to 9.3 billion.

Conrad Hackett, who penned the report based on Pew's research, said: "We can be quite sure that Muslims are going to grow rapidly in the decades ahead."