Islam blooming in UK
LONDON: In comparison with Germany and France where there were around 4,000 conversions every year the UK making record with approximately 5,200 people adopting Islam a year.
In the past decade, the number of Britishers converting to Islam has nearly doubled despite the fact that the UK has witnessed a rise in Islamophobia over the same period, according to a comprehensive study by inter-faith think tank Faith matters.
Britain has witnessed a rise in Islamophobia since September 11 and the London July 7 attacks, but figures shows that this has not adversely affected the number of people converting to Islam each year.
The Independent reported today that by using data from the Scottish 2001 census ( the only survey to ask respondents what their religion was at birth as well as at the time of the survey) researchers found what proportion of Muslim converts there were and then extrapolated the figures for Britain as a whole.
Previous estimates have placed the number of Muslim converts in the UK at between 14,000 and 25,000, but Faith Matters’ study revealed that the real figure could be as high as 100,000, with more than 5,000 new conversions every year.
Inayat Bunglawala, founder of Muslims4UK, which promotes active Muslim engagement in British society said, “Islam is a missionary religion and many Muslim organisations and particularly university students’ Islamic societies have active outreach programmes designed to remove popular misconceptions about the faith.”
He said figures were “not implausible”, “It would mean that around one in 600 Britons is a convert to the faith,” he added.
(News Editor- Naushin Fatima Khan)
