By the year 2040, Muslims will replace Jews as the second-largest religious group in the US after Christians, according to projections by a leading American think tank.

Pew Research Center estimates there were some 3.45 million Muslims living in the US in 2017, accounting for around 1.1 percent of the country’s total population.

While Pew says there are currently more people in the US who identify as Jewish by religion than Muslim, it predicts this will change by the year 2040.

"The US Muslim population will grow much faster than the country's Jewish population,” the research centre explained, citing a 2017 survey of US Muslims and official census data as the basis for its predictions.

By 2050, the research centre added, the US Muslim population is set to more than double to 8.1 million, or 2.1 percent of the nation’s total population.

There is no official government count of the US Muslim population, but according to Pew’s research, the number of followers of Islam in the US has “been growing rapidly” at a rate of around 100,000 per year as a result of migration and higher fertility rates.