“All indications are that a growing number ofBritons who grew up in nominally Christian households are converting to Islam. This partially explains why the number of Muslims is increasing while the number of Christians is declining…this trend can be expected to continue”.

Muslims now make up 5% of the population. At the current rates of growth, the number of Muslims will double again by the time the next census is conducted in 2021, and will then make up 10% of the population.

Religious symbolism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the same period, the Muslim population inEngland and Wales increased by 80% (1.2 million), from 1.5 million in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2011, making it the second-largest religion in Britain.

Many analysts believe the true number of Muslims in Britain may be much higher than indicated by the census data. This is because the religion question was the only voluntary question on the 2011 Census and 7.2% of people did notanswer the question.

The third-largest religion in England and Wales is Hinduism (817,000), followed by Sikhism(423,000), Buddhism (248,000) and Judaism(263,000), the Census report added

English: A green version of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Allah-eser2.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a proportion of the population as a whole (56.07 million people were counted in the census), the number of those describing themselves as Christian has dropped from 72% in 2001 to 59% in 2011. The number of Muslims has increased from 3% to 5% over a decade.

The census data shows that the number of Christians in England and Wales declined by 11% (4.1 million) during the past decade, from