Correct usage of 'majority' in a sentence
Did I have them all grammatically correct? Please correct me if I'm wrong in any of these cases:
- The majority of our population are Buddhists.
- The majority of our population belongs to Buddhists.
- The majority of our population is demanding justice.
- The majority of our employees support the new plans.
- The majority of today's women are aware of their rights.
(1), (4), and (5) are fine.
(3) is also fine, though it may appear clumsy to some.
An example of a sentence very similar to (3) can be found in this book
The majority of our six percent of the world's population consumes one-half of the world's nonrenewable resources.
The "our" refers to the US, where the population of the US is six percent of the world's population. Hence, it can be rewritten as
The majority of our population consumes one-half of the world's nonrenewable resources.
Statement (2) is an interesting one. I'm guessing that the intended meaning is that most of the population are Buddhists. In that case, the way that it is expressed would be wrong, as we would normally say somebody belongs to Buddhism, or to Christianity, or to some other religion, rather than "belongs to Buddhists", "belongs to Christians", etc. For example:
Hindus constitute roughly 11 percent, and the rest belong to Buddhism and Christianity.
(from this book).
However, as pointed out by Jason Bassford in a comment below, statement (2) can be interpreted differently, with the meaning that Buddhists own most of the population (assuming humans can own other humans), and so most of them belong to Buddhists. This would then be grammatically correct but false.