Ivanka Trump is receiving some critique for making an incorrect proclamation about world religions during her much-heralded “Fox & Friends” appearance on Monday morning.
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Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter and an adviser to the commander-in-chief, told the show’s hosts that Judaism is one of the “three largest world religions” while speaking about her recent trip overseas to visit Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders.
It was a proclamation that the Huffington Post framed as factually incorrect.
.@IvankaTrump reflects on POTUS' first foreign trip: To have covered the 3 largest world religions over 4 days was deeply meaningful pic.twitter.com/Eo7ijJdUgd
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) June 12, 2017
“Every day in this experience has been surreal, but that was truly an unbelievable moment … it was deeply personal for me as you know standing at the Western Wall in a moment of privacy,” Trump said, also going on to express her excitement at being able to meet Pope Francis. “To have covered the three largest world religions over the course of four days, it was deeply meaningful.”
As it turns out, Judaism is the world’s eighth most populous religion, though it isn’t uncommon for people to make similar errors.
According to numbers reported by the Pew Research Center, there are 2.3 billion Christians, 1.8 billion Muslims, 1.2 billion unaffiliated individuals, 1.1 billion Hindus and half a billion Buddhists. And there are only about 14 million Jewish individuals across the globe.
The Huffington Post accused Trump of erasing “the followers of several major religions in her statement,” though it is, of course, possible that she was speaking more about worldwide influence than she was the actual number of adherents.
As Faithwire recently reported, world religion demographics are quickly changing. Christians currently make up 31.2 percent of the world, representing 2.3 billion people, while Muslims make up 24.1 percent, totaling 1.8 billion people, according to Pew.
But while Muslims made up just 24 percent of the world, they accounted for 31 percent of all babies born globally between 2010 and 2015. And that pattern isn’t slated to slow down, with Christians’ population growth moving slower.
In fact, while Christians made up 31 percent of the global population in 2015, they had 33 percent of the world’s babies. So, clearly, there’s a difference in birth rates between the two most populous faiths.
Between 2030 and 2035, Pew estimates that the proportion of Christian and Muslim births will be pretty close, with Muslims poised to have 225 million births versus 224 million births for Christians. Those numbers will increase between 2055 and 2060, though, to 232 million and 226 million, with the gap between Muslim and Christian births widening.
Read more about these changing demographics here.