Having personally been to Ground Zero less than a month after the world’s turning point — 9/11 — I tracked the news from around the world to see how society, politics and religion are intersecting with one another 10 years later. Much has been written on Islam in and Muslims in the past decade, a lot of it filled with hate, prejudice and bias but a fair amount of valid criticism of the way the religion has been abused by its leaders. For every individual who has moulded Islam to fit into narrow confines, millions have risen to prove the opposite.

Over the next two decades, in 2030, the Muslim population is going to be:
* Larger. According to the Washington-based Pew Research Center, “the world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35% in the next 20 years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030”. This would take the total Muslim population to 26.4% of the world’s, from 23.4% today.

* Younger today but ageing. “The so-called Muslim youth bulge – the high proportion of youth and young adults in many heavily Muslim societies – has attracted considerable attention from political scientists,”the report states. “Less notice has been paid to the fact that the Muslim youth bulge peaked around the start of the 21st century and is now gradually declining as the Muslim population ages. The percentage of 15- to 29-year-olds in Muslim-majority countries rose slightly between 1990 and 2000 (from 27.5% to 28.8%) but has since dipped slightly to 28.5% and is projected to continue to decline to 24.4% in 2030. While this is not a large drop, it means that the proportion of youth and young adults in many Muslim-majority countries has reached a plateau or begun to fall.”

* Largely Sunni. “Sunni Muslims will continue to make up an overwhelming majority of Muslims in 2030 (87%- 90%),” the report states. “The portion of the world’s Muslims who are Shia may decline slightly, largely because of relatively low fertility in Iran, where more than a third of the world’s Shia Muslims live.”

This is going to change many things, primarily foreign policy that has in the past 10 years been woefully dominated by Islam. “In 1950, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey had a combined population of 242 million,” wrote Jack A. Goldstone in Foreign Affairs. “By 2009, those six countries were the world’s most populous Muslim-majority countries and had a combined population of 886 million.” Dealing with this population and religion is going to need some shift in attitudinal gears.

The currently young population will continue to drive the Arab Spring that is still in its infancy with many flowers still to bloom — Saudi Arabia, Somaila, Yemen and so on. Dictators in these regimes will have to contend with the younger and dynamic aspirations of the future. “But more than demographics — or perhaps because of it — it will be the spirit of the Arab people that will drive change,” I wrote in a previous blog post. “The Arabs, as their reputation goes, are a fiercely independent people.”

But is the Arab uprising “Islamic”? Between varied opinions, “I think, the issue is one of freedom, not religion and we’ll just have to wait and see how democracy shapes up in this freedom-starved region,” I wrote in a blog post titled, Is the Egyptian uprising Islamic?. “If after getting democracy, Egypt supports radical Islam, this ‘revolution’ would end up as the greatest tragedy of this North African nation — and the world.” This issue is not going to end with the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, it will continue to discuss it through the decade ahead. I’ll be tracking it here.

In these years, I will watch my nephew grow into a man. In his eyes I see the compassion, the love and the intellect that defines the true Muslim — in body, mind and spirit.

(Gautam working in Hindustan Times, Delhi)

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