The number of Britons choosing to become Muslims has nearly doubled in the past decade, according to one of the most comprehensive attempts to estimate how many people have embraced Islam.
Following the global spread of violent Islamism, British Muslims have faced more scrutiny, criticism and analysis than any other religious community. Yet, despite the often negative portrayal of Islam, thousands of Britons are adopting the religion every year.
Estimating the number of converts living in Britain has always been difficult because census data does not differentiate between whether a religious person has adopted a new faith or was born into it. Previous estimates have placed the number of Muslim converts in the UK at between 14,000 and 25,000.
But a new study by the inter-faith think-tank Faith Matters suggests the real figure could be as high as 100,000, with as many as 5,000 new conversions nationwide each year.
That’s out of a total UK population of over 60 million. The article goes on to quote Inayat Bunglawala as saying that if Faith Matters’ figures are accurate, this “would mean that around one in 600 Britons is a convert to the faith”. It appears that the “Islamification of Britain” still has some way to go.
Update: See also the Daily Mail, which reports:
“The number of Muslim converts in Britain has passed 100,000, fuelled by a surge in young white women adopting the Islamic faith. The figure has almost doubled in ten years – with the average convert now a 27-year-old white woman fed up with British consumerism and immorality. The numbers, revealed in a study by multi-faith group Faith Matters, have led to claims that the country is undergoing a process of ‘Islamification’.”