Is conversion the main reason the global Muslim population grew?

Pew Research Center’s analysis of religious change from 2010 to 2020 identifies Islam as the fastest-growing major religion over that period. It explains the increase primarily through a relatively young population and higher fertility, while estimating that switching into and out of Islam roughly offset each other globally. The growth measure is therefore not a count of conversions. [1]

The claim needs a place and a period

A global net balance does not mean nobody converts, nobody leaves, or every country has the same pattern. Pew’s separate study of religious switching reports both entry and departure and discusses national differences. Gross conversion in one direction is not the same as a net change after departures are included. [2]

The same caution applies to migration. Moving between countries changes where people live without, by itself, changing the world’s total number of people in a religion. Births, deaths, movement and religious switching answer different questions. An account that substitutes one mechanism for another may describe a dramatic change while misunderstanding how the change occurred.

What this says about Texas

It does not establish a date at which Texas will have a Muslim majority, a current Texas conversion rate, or a political intention shared by Muslim residents. Those are additional claims requiring state-level evidence and explicit assumptions. A projection also is not an observed event, and projecting a single percentage forward forever is not a demographic model.

Readers evaluating a Texas population headline should begin with the dates and meanings of the available state estimates. Growth can be studied without treating religious identity as a coordinated political program. The useful finding here is specific: the cited global growth research does not substantiate a story in which mass conversion was the principal driver during the period measured.