Muslim minority of New Zealand in global context : demographic perspective

This article focuses specifically on the population of Muslims in New Zealand, and highlights their demographic and socio-economic characteristics in a worldwide comparison. Globally, Islam is the fastest-growing religion and Muslims are the second largest religious group. In particular, the population of Muslim migrants in the multicultural and westerns societies is also remarkably growing fast. This also applies to the multicultural setting of New Zealand where have witnessed a substantially increasing growth of Muslim population during the recent decades. Holding a wide range of ethnic and religious groups from throughout the world as well as a variety of Muslims from different parts of the Islamic world, the multicultural field of this study serve as a unique human and cultural laboratory to approach properly the key research objectives of this analysis. The discussion is mainly based on the customized data of population census. This article specifically addresses the main demographic and socio-economic patterns and differentials associated with the population of Muslims in this multicultural context in a global comparison.