Thursday, May 10, 2007

Number of Muslims in Europe

See also: Muslim population in European cities

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According to the Zentral-Institut Islam-Archiv-Deutschland, published in the German Soest, there are 53.7 million Muslims in Europe today, of which 15.9 million live in the European Union. The data is according to information from the European embassies in Germany.

Of the about 680 million European, 7.9% are Muslim, according to the institute. In the EU, about 3.2% are Muslims.

Comparison with earlier figures is not possible since this is the first time smaller European countries took part, according to the Germany news service Idea.

Most Muslims live in Russia (25 million) and in the European part of Turkey (5.9 million). In the EU most Muslims live in France (5.5 million), Germany (3.3 million), Great Britain (1.5 million), Bulgaria (1.1 million), as well as Italy and the Netherlands (almost a million each). There are 350,000 Muslims in Austria and 330,000 in Switzerland.

Muslims form a majority in Turky, but also in Albania (2.1 million) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (2 million). The countries with least Muslims are Andorra (400), Latvia (380) and Iceland (321).

Of the 494.7 million EU citizens, 224.5 million are Roman Catholic, 115 million are atheist, 57.8 million are protestant, 39 million are Orthodox, 15.9 million are Muslim and 1.5 million are Jewish.

Source: Reformatorisch Dagblad (Dutch)