Future of the Global Muslim Population

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The long-awaited Pew report on The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 was eventually published yesterday by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The Forum, based in Washington DC, is a non-partisan organization delivering timely and impartial information on issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. It is an initiative of the Pew Research Center, financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

This report on Muslim population is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, jointly funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

The next documents in the series will be on the number of Christians (to be published later this year) and (in 2012) projections for the future growth of Christianity and other world faiths and of the religiously unaffiliated.

The study of Muslim populations covers 232 countries and territories (including the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man), so it is obviously not going to be possible to summarize it succinctly here. Rather, we shall concentrate on the UK data.

Estimates (the medium of three scenarios) of the number of self-identifying Muslims are provided for 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2030.

Projected figures for each country derive from the application of the well-established cohort-component method to the best available data on fertility, mortality and migration rates, and on related factors such as education, economic well-being and birth control.

The principal sources of the UK information are stated in Appendix B as: ‘1990 estimate based on World Religion Database; 2000 estimate based on 2001 Census; 2010, 2020 and 2030 projections carried out by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis based on the 2001 Census’ (p. 202).

The Institute referred to is located in Laxenburg, Austria, and a number of scholars from it are listed in Appendix C as consultants in respect of the UK: Bilal Barakat, Anne Goujon, Samir KC, Vegard Skirbekk and Marcin Stonawski. Other advisers on the UK were Erik Kaufmann (England) and Erling Lundevaller (Sweden).

The overall size of the UK Muslim population is estimated at 1,172,000 in 1990 (equivalent to 2.0% of all citizens) and 1,590,000 in 2000 (2.7%). The former figure seems somewhat high but is not drastically out of line with other estimates (largely ethnically-derived), while the latter is from the 2001 census, the first in Britain to include a question on religious profession.

The Pew estimate for 2010 is 2,869,000 (4.6% of the UK population). This has been arrived at through the cohort-component method (p. 174). As BRIN noted when this figure was given a preliminary airing by Pew on 16 September last (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=598), it seems a little inflated.

A subsequent BRIN calculation based on the Integrated Household Survey for 2009-10, which interviewed 442,000 individuals in Britain, suggested that there are roughly 2,520,000 Muslims at present (see http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=603).

For a more definitive answer, we shall obviously have to await the results from this year’s census, which will be taken on 27 March, and will again run a (voluntary) question about religious affiliation.

Clearly, if Pew’s 2010 figure is somewhat inflated, this will presumably have impacted on its projections for 2020 and 2030, which could be unduly high. They are, respectively, 4,231,000 (6.5% of the population) and 5,567,000 (8.2%).

The projected UK percentage for 2030 is lower than for France (10.3%), Belgium (10.2%), Sweden (9.9%), Austria (9.3%) and the Western European average (8.6%), but higher than in Switzerland (8.1%), The Netherlands (7.8%), Germany (7.1%), Italy (5.4%) and Spain (3.7%).  

The anticipated rise in the number of UK Muslims between 2010 and 2030 is thus 94%, compared with 145% between 1990 and 2010. Despite this lessening in the rate of growth, the projected UK increase for 2010-30 is still almost three times the global and European figures (35% and 32% respectively).

One of the factors behind the expansion in the Muslim community relative to the non-Muslim population is the higher fertility of the former (3.0 children per woman in the UK in 2005-10) than the latter (1.8).

Although Muslim fertility is declining, and the gap on non-Muslims is narrowing, it is still expected to be 0.8 children per woman in 2025-30 compared with 1.2 in 2005-10.

Greater fertility is linked to the younger age profile of Muslims, meaning that they are disproportionately already in or entering the prime reproductive years (ages 15-29).

Another reason for Muslim growth in the UK is net migration. The net inflow of Muslim immigrants in 2010 is estimated by Pew at 64,000, representing 28% of all immigrants to the UK in the year. There were 70,000 in Spain, 66,000 in France and 60,000 in Italy.

However, the five-year projected Muslim net migration into the UK is set to fall, according to Pew, from 312,000 in 2010-15 to 274,000 in 2025-30.  

No allowance seems to have been made for conversions to Islam, about which we made a post recently (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=813). Pew’s working hypothesis is that ‘future conversions into Islam will roughly equal conversions away from Islam’ (p. 166).

Needless to say, projections such as these could be overturned in the event of unanticipated changes in national or global social, economic or political conditions. Therefore, they should be treated with some discretion.

The 221-page report is available in both hypertext and PDF formats, alongside an interactive map and sortable data tables, thereby providing a truly flexible online resource. All these components can be accessed by following the links at the executive summary page:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1872/muslim-population-projections-worldwide-fast-growth

To view the report alone as a PDF file, go to:

http://features.pewforum.org/FutureGlobalMuslimPopulation-WebPDF.pdf

Pew’s research will inevitably fuel the debates about immigration and Islamophobia in the UK. Early off the starting-block is the article in today’s Daily Mail which claims that by 2030 ‘Britain would have more Muslims than Kuwait and close to the number found in America, even though five times as many people live there’. See:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351251/Number-British-Muslims-double-5-5m-20-years.html

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Perceptions of Discrimination

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Today’s news includes a report that two devout Christians running a private hotel in Cornwall have been found to be in breach of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 for refusing to allow a gay couple to share a double room on their premises. The couple has been awarded damages against the hotel owners.

The fact that a Christian husband and wife seeking to uphold, as they saw it, a traditional Christian view of marriage have committed an act of direct discrimination against two homosexuals in a civil partnership will doubtless be seized upon by some Christians as further proof that the legal odds are stacked against Christians.

But does the general public agree with this reading of events? Before Christmas we reported on a ComRes poll for Christian Concern on the topic (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=804). This probed attitudes to the rights of Christians, but largely in isolation from those of other sections of society.

Now YouGov has undertaken another poll for The Sun which provides a broader, more comparative context. The 1,884 respondents, adult Britons aged 18 and over interviewed online on 17 and 18 January, were asked to say how far they felt each of sixteen groups (four of them religious) was unfairly discriminated against in Britain.

10% said that Christians suffered a lot of discrimination, rising to 12% among men, the over-60s and Conservative voters. A further 18% thought they suffered some discrimination (including 24% of Conservatives and 22% of over-60s), 29 per cent a little, 34% not at all, while 10% had no clear opinion.

The proportion holding that Christians suffered a lot of discrimination was higher than those saying the same about Jews (5%) and atheists (2%), although it was less than for Muslims (18% saying that they experienced a lot of discrimination, peaking at 29% among the 18-24s).

Only 17% of the sample claimed that Muslims were not discriminated against at all, which was 7% less than in the case of Jews, 17% less than for Christians and 38% less than for atheists.

In fact, 55% were of the view that atheists suffered absolutely no discrimination, the only one of the sixteen groups for which an absolute majority took this line. This figure rose to 62% with Conservatives and 60% with over-60s and Scots.

If we combine the categories of groups perceived to suffer a lot of discrimination and to suffer some discrimination, then the following rank order emerges:

  1. Gypsies and travellers  –  60%
  2. Immigrants  –  54%
  3. Transsexuals  –  53%
  4. Muslims  –  50%
  5. Elderly people  –  45%
  6. Asian people  –  44%
  7. Gays and lesbians  –  43%
  8. Black people  –  41%
  9. White people  –  32%
  10. Working class people  –  31%
  11. Women  –  29%
  12. Christians  –  28%
  13. Jews  –  26%
  14. People with ginger hair  –  25%
  15. People with regional accents  –  17%
  16. Atheists  –  10%

The survey therefore appears to confirm the findings from other research that Muslims are the religious group suffering greatest discrimination. Despite a millennium of British anti-Semitism, and contrary to the impression of some Jewish commentators, Jews seem to fare better than expected and better even than Christians.

It should be remembered, of course, that this was a survey about people’s perceptions of groups which suffer discrimination, and that Christians would have been the largest single religious category of people doing the perceiving. The study was thus analogous to some of the questions in the Government Citizenship Surveys.

It is therefore possible that a different league table might have emerged had the questioning been about either personal experiences of being discriminated against and/or prejudices which individuals hold against particular groups. It would be especially interesting to know how atheists would come out of such an exercise, given that they seem the least disadvantaged of all the groups in this study.

The data tables for this YouGov poll will be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Sun-Discrimination-190111.pdf

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Converts to Islam

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Conversion to Islam by Britons is a centuries-old phenomenon but has only become numerically significant in recent decades. Mostly, the process passes relatively unnoticed by the public, but there have been occasional high-profile conversions, including recently that of the journalist Lauren Booth (sister-in-law of the former British prime minister, Tony Blair), which drew significant negative media coverage.

The phenomenon has attracted more attention in the academic literature, with, for example, important books by Ali Köse, Conversion to Islam: A Study of Native British Converts (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996) and Kate Zebiri, British Muslim Converts: Choosing Alternative Lives (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008).

There have also been various autobiographies and biographies of converts, some historical, like Ron Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam (Markfield: Kube Publishing, 2010), others more contemporary, such as Lucy Bushill-Matthews, Welcome to Islam: A Convert’s Tale (London: Continuum, 2008).

Yesterday’s edition of The Times (only available online to subscribers) contained a two-page feature by Ruth Gledhill, the newspaper’s religion correspondent, investigating British converts to Islam, largely through a sneak preview of an as yet unpublished report from Faith Matters, an organization which works towards conflict resolution and cohesion through partnership with faith communities in the UK and Middle East.

Entitled A Minority within a Minority: A Report on Converts to Islam in the United Kingdom, the publication is authored by Kevin Brice, a higher education administrator at Swansea University and a convert to Islam himself. He is also General Secretary of the Muslims in Britain Research Network and a member of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. His academic profile is at http://www.mbrn.org.uk/members/bricekevin.html.

The number of converts to British Islam is estimated in the document to have almost doubled in the past decade, from 61,000 in 2001, to stand now at approximately 100,000, or 4% of the British Muslim community. Converts in the UK in 2010 alone are put at 5,200 in the light of a survey of over 250 London mosques. This annual rate is broadly on a par with conversions to Islam in France and Germany.

A separate online enquiry among 122 converts in August and September found that 38% were men and 62% women (although, surprisingly, marriage was not the key driver for conversion in at least 45% of instances).

The average age of conversion was 27.5 years. 44% had converted in 2001 or before and 56% subsequently. 56% of converts were white British, 16% other whites, and 29% non-whites. 7% were actually Pakistani by birth; they are presumed to have been brought up by lapsed Muslims.

Just 12% of converts altered their name officially following conversion, but a majority adopted a Muslim name or used a different name when with other Muslims. Three-quarters, including 90% of female converts, changed the way they dressed.

Converts did not generally regard their new faith as incompatible with Western life, although 39% did see themselves as Muslims first and British second. 84% considered that converts could act as a bridge between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and 64% rejected the notion that there is a natural conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in the UK.

According to Gledhill, Brice further discovered that the converts’ path was not entirely a smooth one. Their conversion occasioned a degree of isolation from their own families and friends, at least initially, doubtless partly reflecting latent Islamophobia in Britain.

At the same time, the new converts struggled to get the support they needed from their local mosque and were often ignored or mistrusted by birthright Muslims. They also came under pressure to comply with some practices which had more to do with culture than Islam.

POSTSCRIPT [7 January 2011]

Another two-page feature about the Faith Matters report appeared in The Independent on 4 January 2011, written by Jerome Taylor and Sarah Morrison. The article is available online at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-islamification-of-britain-record-numbers-embrace-muslim-faith-2175178.html

The full report appears to have been published by Faith Matters on the same day and can be downloaded from:

http://faith-matters.org/images/stories/fm-reports/a-minority-within-a-minority-a-report-on-converts-to-islam-in-the-uk.pdf

Chapters of special statistical interest comprise: chapter 3 on estimating the number of converts to Islam in the UK; chapter 4 on print media portrayals of converts in the UK between 2001 and 2010; and chapter 5 on the survey of converts. 

Some minor changes to the original BRIN post have been made in the light of the availability of the full report.

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Not Ashamed – Christianity in Britain

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Some sections of British evangelical Christianity feel increasingly beleaguered in the face of what they perceive as the progressive marginalization of their faith, at the hands of the law, the media, government and employers.

Christian Concern is one organization seeking to redress the balance, underpinned by its e-mail subscription base of 27,000 supporters. On 1 December it formally launched its ‘Not Ashamed’ campaign, encouraging Christians to live out their faith in public.

Through its sister agency, the Christian Legal Centre, it has dealt with several high-profile cases on religious freedom, abortion and marriage and the family, defending Christians ‘who have stood for their beliefs and suffered the consequences’.

To coincide with the inauguration of ‘Not Ashamed’, Christian Concern commissioned ComRes to undertake a telephone survey into the public’s attitudes to the rights of Christians. Interviews were conducted with 1,006 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 26-29 November 2010.

Headline findings from the survey are contained in two press releases issued by Christian Concern on 5 and 20 December, which also provide useful background notes on the six legal cases which have informed the questions asked in the poll.

These press releases can be found at:

http://www.christianconcern.com/press-release/72-of-public-say-christians-should-be-able-to-refuse-to-act-against-their-conscience-w

http://www.christianconcern.com/our-concerns/employment/public-backs-protection-of-christian-conscience-at-work

The full data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/christianconcernpolldec10.aspx

The sample was evenly divided on the extent to which Britain can still be described as a Christian country, 50% thinking it can and 47% that it cannot. This represents a big shift since the NOP/New Society poll in March 1965, when the figures were 80% and 19% respectively.

The over-65s (66%) and Scots (57%) were among those most likely to consider Britain to be a Christian country. Dissentients were especially concentrated among the 18-24s (68%) and the C1 social group (54%).

In an implicit reference to the Shirley Chaplin vs Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust case, 73% of the whole sample (and 82% of the over-65s) agreed that people should have the legal right to wear Christian symbols such as a cross in their workplace. 24% disagreed, including 38% of 18-24s.

87% disagreed that health care workers should be threatened with the sack for offering to pray with patients, a question apparently prompted by the analogous cases of Olive Jones and Duke Amachree. Only 11% agreed with the proposition.

Opinion again split on the issue of whether would-be foster carers who hold that homosexual activity is morally wrong should be banned from fostering (an allusion to the case of Owen and Eunice Johns vs Derby City Council). 40% of respondents thought such foster carers should be banned, while 54% disagreed.

In a more summative question, 72% agreed that Christians should be able to refuse to act against their conscience without being penalized by their employer, with 22% in disagreement (including 31% of 18-24s).

Rather playing the Islamophobic card, 56% backed the statement that Muslims often enjoy greater freedom of speech and action than Christians in Britain today, the proportion reaching three-fifths among the over-55s, manual workers, Northerners and Scots. 36% disagreed, increasing to 48% of the 18-24s.

Christian Concern has glossed the survey as showing that ‘draconian and politically correct rules which discriminate against Christians living out their faith in the public square have been slammed by the public …’ And it reminded the Coalition Government of their reliance upon churches and Christian organizations to help deliver the Big Society.

In reality, this possibly over-interprets the poll findings, some of which could be read as delivering more mixed messages from the public about the importance of maintaining a Christian presence in the nation.

In particular, the youngest age cohorts seem to be more sceptical on this matter than others, reflecting the fact that, in separate investigations, they were least likely to profess Christianity or any religion (the Christian Concern survey did not enquire into religious affiliation).

Moreover, such support for the Christian viewpoint as was registered in this poll might have been qualified had the questions been put in a somewhat broader context, for example pitching the freedom of some Christians against equal opportunities for society as a whole.

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Violent Extremism

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

One of the four strands in the previous Labour government’s CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy was focused on preventing extremism. It was especially concerned to stop the radicalization of young Muslims, following the London bombings in 2005.

In an effort to improve the evidence base, the Department for Communities and Local Government decided to include an experimental module on attitudes to violent extremism in the first three quarters (April-December 2009) of the 2009-10 Citizenship Survey of England and Wales.

Fieldwork was undertaken by Ipsos MORI and TNS-BMRB among a representative sample of adults aged 16 and over, including booster samples of ethnic minorities and Muslims. 12,089 people were interviewed in all, among them a core sample of 6,963 and 2,708 Muslims.

The headline results from the module have been published recently in a statistical release from the Department (ISBN 978-1-4098-2529-6), which can be read online at:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/statistics/pdf/1702054.pdf

Professing Christians (87%) were more likely than Sikhs (82%), Muslims (80%), people with no religion (79%) and Hindus (76%) to say that it was always wrong to use violent extremism in Britain to protest against things deemed to be very unfair or unjust.

The proportion thinking it was sometimes, often or always right to deploy violence stood at 8% overall, peaking at 15% for Hindus, 12% for Muslims and 10% for the irreligious. Jewish and Buddhist sub-samples were too small to report.

However, in a multivariate analysis, taking account of age, income, social class and other circumstances, only people with no religion were found to be significantly different from Christians.

So, while Muslims and Hindus (as a group) were less likely than Christians to reject violent extremism, the differences are largely explicable in terms of their younger age and/or divergent socio-economic profiles. Age is particularly relevant.

This explanation does not hold good for the no religion group. Even controlling for age and socio-economic factors, its members remained less likely than Christians to reject violent extremism.

The report is at pains to point out that ‘this does not mean that the absence of religious beliefs contributes to greater support for violent extremism. There may be other factors, which were not included in the multivariate analysis, which explain the difference …’

In addition to this general question, respondents were asked about the use of violent extremism, in the name of religion, to protest or achieve a goal. In the core sample (excluding 2% who failed to answer), 95% said that this was always wrong, 4% often wrong, 1% sometimes right and sometimes wrong, with very small numbers indeed opting for often or always right. These results are not broken down by religious affiliation.

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Facing the Axe? Diocese of Bradford in the Headlights

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Periodic reports about Islam overtaking the Church of England in terms of the number of worshippers have been a feature of media life for much of the past decade.

The latest variant on the theme is to be found in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday, in an article by Jonathan Petre and Andrew Chapman. A version of this is online at:  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323237/Facing-axe-Diocese-twice-Muslim-worshippers-Anglicans.html

The opening paragraph summarizes the story: ‘A historic Church of England diocese where Muslim worshippers outnumber Anglican churchgoers by two to one is set to be scrapped.’

The diocese concerned is Bradford, which – the article suggests – is being lined up by the Dioceses Commission for possible merger with the neighbouring Diocese of Ripon and Leeds (it was actually part of the Diocese of Ripon until separated out in 1919).

Neither the Diocese of Bradford nor the Commission was willing to comment on this mooted reorganization. But what of the other half of the equation, the suggestion that Friday mosque attendances have surpassed Anglican Sunday congregations?

The Bradford diocesan churchgoing statistic quoted is the Mail on Sunday is the usual Sunday attendance figure of 8,700 for 2008, taken from the latest edition of Church Statistics.

Other and more favourable figures for the Diocese of Bradford in that year are overlooked, one suspects deliberately. These are (in ascending order): average Sunday attendance of 10,200, electoral roll membership of 11,300, average weekly attendance of 12,200, Easter Day attendance of 13,800, and Christmas Day/Eve attendance of 26,100.

As for Muslims, a total population figure of about 80,000 for Bradford is cited, apparently put forward by Peter Brierley of Brierley Research. The basis for this estimate is not explained.

The 2001 census of the Bradford Unitary Authority identified 75,200 Muslims, representing 16% of all inhabitants at that date. However, if the Muslim community in Bradford has grown at the same rate as in the rest of the country since the census, the number of Muslims in the city must now be about 110,000, rather than 80,000.

The article goes on to say that ‘Government surveys have established that at least a quarter of Muslims are weekly mosque-goers’. Therefore, ‘on a conservative estimate 20,000 are regular worshippers, more than double the number of their Anglican counterparts.’

It is not clarified what these ‘Government surveys’ are. By far the largest such enquiry which includes religion, the Integrated Household Survey, is confined to religious affiliation and does not measure religious observance.

The question used in the Government’s Citizenship Survey asks whether respondents practice their religion, and 80% of Muslims in 2008-09 said that they did.

An as yet unpublished academic study of Muslims, conducted by Ipsos MORI in 2009 and made available by BRIN’s David Voas, records claimed weekly attendance at services as higher than one-quarter, 30% for the 18-34s and 50% for the over-35s. These claims may, of course, be exaggerated.

It is also far from certain whether the Mail on Sunday’s journalists are comparing like-with-like in spatial terms. The Diocese of Bradford is larger than the city, as regards both population (by 37% in 2001) and area, its 920 square miles taking in (as the article acknowledges) the western quarter of North Yorkshire and parts of East Lancashire, South-East Cumbria and Leeds.

Thus, while the general point made by the article still stands, that Anglicans are in relative retreat in a city which, in 2001, had the fourth highest proportion of Muslims anywhere in the country, it otherwise leaves a very great deal to be desired in respect of presentation and interpretation of the facts. These appear to have been sacrificed in the pursuit of a sensationalist headline.

The story is rerun in today’s Daily Express, in an article by Mark Reynolds, with the additional twist that, following projections in Christian Research’s Religious Trends, it is claimed that ‘even Hindus will soon come close to outnumbering churchgoers’. See:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/207388/Church-diocese-is-axed-because-of-Muslim-influx

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How Fair is Britain?

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Section 12 of the Equality Act 2006 endowed the newly-formed Equality and Human Rights Commission with a responsibility to monitor the progress that society is making towards becoming more equal, and to report on it every three years.

The first such triennial review was published yesterday as How Fair is Britain? Equality, Human Rights and Good Relations in 2010. This alone runs to 750 pages but is supplemented by a raft of specially-commissioned research reports and by submissions in response to a call for evidence. All this documentation can be freely accessed at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/key-projects/triennial-review/

Religion (as measured by religious affiliation) is one of the key equality variables to be monitored, although religious data are not necessarily available for all equality indicators which are covered by the review.

Most of the information used derives from secondary analysis of existing datasets, including, in the case of religion, the Population Census, Annual Population Survey, Labour Force Survey, Citizenship Survey, Health Survey for England, and Wealth and Assets Survey.

There is only occasional new primary data, such as the National Foundation for Educational Research’s online survey of 1,758 English schoolteachers’ attitudes towards religious and other forms of equality in January-February 2010. There is a separate report for this at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/triennial_review/triennial_review_nfer_teachervoice_omnibus.doc

Overall, the review found a Britain far less prejudiced on race and homosexuality than twenty years ago. However, numerous inequalities remain. Specifically, Muslims are shown to experience much disadvantage, in terms of lower educational qualifications, higher unemployment, lower pay, poorer health, and above-average imprisonment.

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Integrated Household Survey – First Release of Data

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Clive D. Field

New estimates of the religious profile of Great Britain were published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 23 September, in the form of the first release of data from the Integrated Household Survey (IHS) for April 2009 to March 2010.

The IHS is a composite household survey combining the answers from six ONS household surveys to produce an experimental (ie still to be assessed by the UK Statistics Authority) dataset of core variables. It is the largest social survey ever attempted by ONS and represents the biggest pool of UK social data after the decennial population census.

The aim of the IHS is to produce high-level estimates for particular themes to a greater precision and lower geographic area than current ONS household surveys. Religion is one of the themes covered in Britain (but not in Northern Ireland), and in 2009-10 data on it are available for 442,266 respondents.

The question posed was: ‘What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?’ This differs somewhat from the various questions asked about religious affiliation in the separate home nations at the 2001 census.

In response, and with missing values apparently excluded from the baseline, 20.5% of British people claimed to have no religion, 19.6% in England, 28.0% in Wales and 24.7% in Scotland.

At unitary authority or county level, Slough had the highest level of religious affiliation in England (93%), while Brighton and Hove had the lowest (58%). In Scotland there was a high of 92% in Inverclyde and a low of 62% in Midlothian. In Wales the range was from 81% in Flintshire down to 67% in Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly and Swansea.

71.4% of all Britons stated that they were Christians, ranging from 69.0% in Wales to 72.3% in Scotland. The 2001 census figure for Britain was 70.6%, taking the current religion data for Scotland. However, this is calculated against a baseline which includes those who did not answer the religious question (which was voluntary in 2001).

The next largest religious group in the IHS was the Muslim community, at 4.2% of the British population (4.7% in England and 1.2% in Wales and Scotland). This equates to 2,520,000 individuals (against the mid-2009 population estimate, the latest available), lower by 350,000 than the calculation just released by Pew which was the subject of our post at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=598.

Other faith communities recorded in the IHS were Buddhists (0.4%), Hindus (1.4%), Jews (0.5%), Sikhs (0.6%) and other religions (1.1%).

All the above data are extracted from the statistical bulletin and appended documentation to be found at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=15381

IHS data will also be made available via ESDS.

This is a preliminary news post only. In due course, BRIN would hope to undertake a fuller analysis of these and subsequent IHS data (the rolling IHS dataset will be published by ONS at quarterly intervals).

POSTSCRIPT [23 October 2010]

The dataset for the 2009-10 IHS was released by ESDS on 22 October as SN 6584. It is now available for secondary analysis. See:

http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=6584

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The Sun Shines Some Light

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Clive D. Field

BRIN readers might not naturally think of The Sun, perhaps Britain’s most famous weekday tabloid newspaper, as a source of religious intelligence. However, as part of its polling contract with YouGov, it did add a couple of questions on topical issues to a survey conducted online on 20 September among a representative sample of 772 British adults aged 18 and over.

The first sought to quantify what is already being described as the ‘Benedict bounce’, following the recent papal visit to Britain. Respondents were asked whether, on the basis of what they had seen and heard, their opinion of the Pope had changed as a result of the visit. 15% said that their opinion had become more positive and 9% more negative. For 61% the visit had made no difference to their views, while 16% could not say. The positive impact of the visit on perceptions of the Pope was most evidenced among Conservative voters, the under-25s, and residents of London, the Midlands/Wales and Scotland (the three regions where the main events of the visit had been staged). The data tables can be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-PopesVisitReaction-results-200910.pdf

The second topic covered was that of halal meat, on the back of tabloid newspaper reports that restaurants and caterers are increasingly using halal products surreptitiously, without overtly telling their customers. 73% of Britons in The Sun poll thought that food providers should be required to label halal meat as such and 20% that they should not. The most notable demographic variation was by age, the under-25s (57%) being least insistent on labelling and the over-60s (81%) the most. This follows the general trend of questions relating to Muslim issues whereby younger people are more sympathetic than their elders. For the data tables, see:  

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Halal_Food-results-200910.pdf

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How Many Muslims?

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published on 16 September a table giving estimates of the Muslim population of each country in Western Europe in 2010. This formed part of a press release about a new Pew report on Muslim Networks and Movements in Western Europe. However, the estimates are actually from another and still forthcoming Pew report on the growth rates among Muslim populations worldwide, and including projections for 2020 and 2030.

Pew’s UK figure for 2010 is 2,869,000, which is equivalent to 4.6% of the population. In absolute terms, the UK has the third largest Muslim community on the continent, after Germany (4,119,000) and France (3,574,000).

In percentage terms, the UK is in ninth position, after Belgium (6.0%), France, Austria and Switzerland (5.7%), The Netherlands (5.5%), Germany (5.0%), Sweden (4.9%) and Greece (4.7%). UK Muslims account for 16.8% of all Muslims in Western Europe.

The 2010 UK statistic represents an increase of 74.2% on the 1,647,000 (2.7% of the population) which Pew quoted as recently as last October, in its report Mapping the Global Muslim Population (pp. 22, 32, 54).

That figure was primarily based on the 2001 census, which was the first reliable measure of UK Muslim numbers, earlier estimates having been ethnically derived. No explanation (nor source) for the revised estimate is given by Pew, but doubtless all will be explained in its forthcoming report.

The 2001 census was thought to have been somewhat of an underestimate of Muslim numbers at that time, despite serious efforts by the Muslim Council of Britain and other community leaders to get Muslims to register their faith on the census schedule.

The most widely-publicized figures for Muslims since the census have been estimates for Great Britain from the Government’s Labour Force Survey (LFS), which rose from 1,870,000 in 2004 to 2,422,000 in 2008.

These first emerged in The Times on 30 January 2009 and were officially published in Hansard on 7 July 2009, in reply to a parliamentary question. They generated numerous media headlines about the Muslim population of Britain rising ten times faster than the rest of society.

No new LFS-based estimates have been released since, although they could presumably be easily generated by Government or academics (LFS data are routinely deposited at ESDS).

Another Government source, the Citizenship Survey, which covers adults aged 16 and over in England and Wales, reveals that the proportion of Muslims in the population doubled between 2001 and 2008-09, from 2% to 4%. Four-fifths of Muslims at the latter date claimed to be practising their faith, compared with 37% of all adults professing a religion and 32% of Christians.

According to Sophie Gilliat-Ray (Muslims in Britain, 2010, p. 117) the significant increase in the Muslim population ‘may be attributed to recent immigration, the growing birth rate, some conversion to Islam, and perhaps also an increased willingness to self-identify as “Muslim” on account of the “war on terror”’. The demography of Islam is explored in some detail in chapters 4 and 5 of Eric Kaufmann’s Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (2010).

The 2010 Pew table can be found at:

http://features.pewforum.org/muslim/number-of-muslims-in-western-europe.html

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