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Reuters – March 30, 2008
Muslims outnumber Catholics
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.
Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.
"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.
He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.
The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.
Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.
He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.
Dawn – March 27, 2008
US to attend inter-faith dialogue
WASHINGTON, March 26, 2008: The United States on Wednesday welcomed Saudi King Abdullah’s initiative for dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews and will send its envoy to participate in the proposed talks.
“The dialogue is always encouraging,” said Sada Cumber, special US envoy to the Organisation of Islamic conference. “We will attend the meeting.”
The Saudi king made an impassioned plea for dialogue among the followers of the three faiths in Riyadh on Monday and offered to call a meeting of their representatives in the kingdom.
The call – the first of its kind by an Arab leader – has generated much interest in such a dialogue and representatives of all three faiths have welcomed the idea.
The specifics of the proposed meeting are still being worked out.
Mr Cumber, who is an American Muslim of Pakistani origin and the first US envoy to the OIC, said the United States wishes to stay engaged with the Muslim community around the world.
The United States, he said, has proposed three areas of cooperation — science and technology, women’s rights and education — and noted that such cooperation would help promote a better understanding between the Islamic and Western worlds.
He said that five to seven million Muslims living in the US enjoy high quality of life, freedom of expression and a respect of their religion and they can play a significant role in bridging differences between the two worlds.
Mr Cumber said that while as a Muslim he condemns the cartoons that make fun of religious beliefs, he also understands that freedom of expression was an integral part of the Western culture.
“In the United States, what we do not like we can reject and I reject those cartoons” he said. “But if you are asking me to give away that freedom; I am not prepared to do that.”
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