LOC12:59
09:59 GMT
LONDON, Jan 4 (KUNA) -- The number of Britons choosing to become Muslims
has nearly doubled in the past decade, it was reported Tuesday.
Following the global spread of "violent Islamism", British Muslims have
faced more scrutiny, criticism and analysis than any other religious
community, the Independent newspaper reported.
Yet, despite the often negative portrayal of Islam, thousands of Britons
are adopting the religion every year, according to one of the most
comprehensive attempts to estimate how many people have embraced Islam.
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, the paper noted.
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.
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 broke down what proportion of Muslim converts there were
and then extrapolated the figures for Britain as a whole.
In all they estimated that there were 60,699 converts living in Britain in
2001.
With no new census planned until next year, researchers polled mosques in
London to try to calculate how many conversions take place a year.
The results gave a figure of 1,400 conversions in the capital in the past
12 months which, when extrapolated nationwide, would mean approximately 5,200
people adopting Islam every year. The figures are comparable with studies in
Germany and France which found that there were around 4,000 conversions a year.
Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, admitted that coming up with a
reliable estimate of the number of converts to Islam was notoriously difficult.
"This report is the best intellectual 'guestimate' using census numbers,
local authority data and polling from mosques," he said.
"Either way few people doubt that the number adopting Islam in the UK has
risen dramatically in the past 10 years."
Asked why people were converting in such large numbers he replied "I think
there is definitely a relationship between conversions being on the increase
and the prominence of Islam in the public domain.
People are interested in finding out what Islam is all about and when they
do that they go in different directions.
Most shrug their shoulders and return to their lives but some will
inevitably end up liking what they discover and will convert."
Batool al-Toma, an Irish born convert to Islam of 25 years who works at the
Islamic Foundation and runs the New Muslims Project, one of the earliest
groups set up specifically to help converts, said she believed the new figures
were "a little on the high side".
"My guess would be the real figure is somewhere in between previous
estimates, which were too low, and this latest one," she said.
"I definitely think there has been a noticeable increase in the number of
converts in recent years. The media often tries to pinpoint specifics but the
reasons are as varied as the converts themselves."
Inayat Bunglawala, founder of Muslims4UK, which promotes active Muslim
engagement in British society, said the figures were "not implausible".
"It would mean that around one in 600 Britons is a convert to the faith,"
he 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."
The report by Faith Matters also studied the way converts were portrayed by
the media and found that while 32 per cent of articles on Islam published
since 2001 were linked to terrorism or extremism, the figure jumped to 62 per
cent with converts.
There are around 1.6 million Muslims in the UK, the majority from India and
Pakistan. (end)
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KUNA 041259 Jan 11NNNN