Post by lindalovely on Mar 27, 2023 9:55:19 GMT 1
Some figures I found from various official sources. Other sources seem to come to similar conclusions but happy to be corrected:
"Islam in France is a minority faith. Muslims are estimated to represent around 4 to 8 percent of the nation's population and France is estimated to have the largest number of Muslims in the Western world, primarily due to migration from Maghrebi, West African, and Middle Eastern countries. By 2030, people of Muslim faith or origin are predicted to form about 8% of the population of Europe."
"According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, Muslims in England and Wales enumerated 3,868,133, or 6.5% of the population".
Estimates of the proportion of Catholics in France range between 41% and 88% of France's population, with the higher figure including lapsed Catholics and "Catholic atheists".
Around 5.2 million Catholics live in England and Wales, or around 9.6 percent of the population there, and nearly 700,000 in Scotland, or around 14 percent.
For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question.
So if these figures are correct then we are hardly looking at a sweeping change, and if there is any sweeping change it is that less people are identifying as Christian. I can remember at school we were told that we were all Christian (apart from the Jewish students). For many years it was just something I accepted. It didn't mean much on a spiritual level because none of may family believed in God. It's only in later years that I unpicked this, and now when asked about my religion I say none, which is the truth. When I had to do jury service in the UK I was one of the exceptions who refused to swear an oath on a religious text but chose to affirm. I quite like the fact that in France an 'attestation sur honour" is considered the same as swearing on the bible.
With this in mind, coloured lights in Oxford circus, or anywhere else, celebrating a religious festival, are interesting but carry no specific meaning or significance. I can see no reason why Christmas lights are any different to Ramadan lights, Diwali lights or Hanukkah candles.
"Islam in France is a minority faith. Muslims are estimated to represent around 4 to 8 percent of the nation's population and France is estimated to have the largest number of Muslims in the Western world, primarily due to migration from Maghrebi, West African, and Middle Eastern countries. By 2030, people of Muslim faith or origin are predicted to form about 8% of the population of Europe."
"According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, Muslims in England and Wales enumerated 3,868,133, or 6.5% of the population".
Estimates of the proportion of Catholics in France range between 41% and 88% of France's population, with the higher figure including lapsed Catholics and "Catholic atheists".
Around 5.2 million Catholics live in England and Wales, or around 9.6 percent of the population there, and nearly 700,000 in Scotland, or around 14 percent.
For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question.
So if these figures are correct then we are hardly looking at a sweeping change, and if there is any sweeping change it is that less people are identifying as Christian. I can remember at school we were told that we were all Christian (apart from the Jewish students). For many years it was just something I accepted. It didn't mean much on a spiritual level because none of may family believed in God. It's only in later years that I unpicked this, and now when asked about my religion I say none, which is the truth. When I had to do jury service in the UK I was one of the exceptions who refused to swear an oath on a religious text but chose to affirm. I quite like the fact that in France an 'attestation sur honour" is considered the same as swearing on the bible.
With this in mind, coloured lights in Oxford circus, or anywhere else, celebrating a religious festival, are interesting but carry no specific meaning or significance. I can see no reason why Christmas lights are any different to Ramadan lights, Diwali lights or Hanukkah candles.