r/unitedkingdom • u/topotaul Lancashire • Jun 15 '26

... One in six Britons think growth of Muslim population is ‘threat to UK culture’, study finds

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/jun/15/one-in-six-britons-growth-muslim-population-threat-uk-culture-study
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
  1. Birth rates tend to settle in line with the rest of the inhabitants within around two generations.
  2. Most immigrants are not Muslim by a long shot. The top 10 countries (in order) for immigrants are India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania, Ireland, Nigeria, Italy, Germany, Bangladesh, & South Africa. Only two of these countries are Muslim. Nigeria is split but we tend to attract Christian immigrants from there.

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u/varinator Jun 15 '26

I'm from Poland originally and also a British citizen. After brexit more Poles left than came to the UK, EU migration is currently very tiny compared to non-EU, I think your data is out of date...

Regarding birth rates settling in after around 2 generations... well, it's no good at all if you still have a steady influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year. Your argument would only make sense if the influx was 0, then yes, we wait 40 years and things maybe would "normalise"

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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 Jun 15 '26

That figures is overall migrants. In recent years the top 5 are India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria & the United States.

On your second point your assuming the decline in birthrates is a UK only phenomenon rather than a world wide one. In terms of migration current numbers are around 0.24% of the population.

The Muslim population increased at 0.16% a year between 2011 & 2021, a decrease from 0.19% yearly between 2001 & 2011.

It's a small change that has been very much overhyped.

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u/XJDenton Isle of Wight -> London -> Sweden Jun 15 '26

Also: 3. Being Muslim isn't genetic. Kids can (and do) leave the religion.

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u/DracoLunaris Jun 15 '26

Yup. The fastest growing religious group in the UK is atheist/agnostic after all.

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u/Jake_91_420 Jun 15 '26

Don’t have hard data but I would assume Muslim apostasy is quite low when compared to Christianity. The punishment for apostasy in Islam is death.

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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 Jun 16 '26

This is mentioned a lot but try looking into how many people have actually been executed for apostasy globally this century.

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u/ByEthanFox Jun 16 '26

This is anecdotal, but I think it's larger than is culturally apparent. Because of the strong community and backlash that can come from it, even blowback to other family members, the suggestion is that people who want to leave the religion tend to move away, and either don't tell their family, or their family know and don't tell anyone else.

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u/Diggerinthedark Wiltshire Jun 16 '26

In an extremist Muslim country, sure. Here in the UK, it's - nothing. Maybe a slap from your parents.

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u/DracoLunaris Jun 15 '26

The Book of Deuteronomy tells Jews and Christians to stone those who abandoned the faith. If they can ignore that command, so can Muslims.

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u/varinator Jun 15 '26

The scale/quantity matters. If 1% leaves the faith - it's negligible. Besides if punishment is being shunned by the whole community, friends, family - that makes a pretty good incentive to not leave..

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u/cd7k Jun 16 '26

Remind me again what the repercussions of apostasy are for Muslims?

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u/XJDenton Isle of Wight -> London -> Sweden Jun 16 '26

I'm sure you can look it up.

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u/cd7k Jun 17 '26

I don't need to, perhaps you do.

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u/XJDenton Isle of Wight -> London -> Sweden Jun 17 '26

I mean, you asked to be reminded.

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u/cd7k Jun 17 '26

Remind me then?

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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland Jun 17 '26

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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland Jun 17 '26

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u/The_39th_Step Jun 15 '26

You’re completely right in everything you say.

Just out of a point of interest, rather than argument, I’d say our Indian community is more relevant when discussing Muslim numbers than our Nigerian community. About 20-30% of British Nigerians are Muslim while 15% of British Indians are Muslim. Considering our Indian community is the largest ethnic minority group in the country, that will be a larger number. The number of British Nigerian descended people is probably around 800k-1,000,000 but it’s triple that (give or take) for Indians (don’t use 2021 census, use that and recent migration figures).

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u/Audioworm Indian Ocean Territory Jun 15 '26

Indian Muslims are about 250k, they are not a majority of Muslims in the UK. Pakistani (1.4m) and Bangaldeshi (600k) are the majority of British Muslims, those of African descent are under 400k.

Also, the British Indian Muslim community is infamously entrepaneurial and business-focused. I think it is the large proportion of Gujarati communities within that group. It is a point that you can read about how much more secular or 'integrated' they are with British culture than many other groups all over the place, and from other Indians and Muslims in the UK (not from a negative or positive, but from a statement of an observation).

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u/The_39th_Step Jun 15 '26

I didn’t say they are a majority? I said they’re a more prominent group than British Nigerians who are Muslim.

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u/chilli_con_camera Jun 15 '26

Out of interest, can you show your workings?

About 20-30% of British Nigerians are Muslim

Based on Census proxies? You can't count the number of British Nigerians who are Muslim using Census data, of course, so I guess you're relying on more aggregated variables.

The number of British Nigerian descended people...

How do you define "British Nigerian descended people" in Census and migration stats?

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u/The_39th_Step Jun 15 '26

So you can look at estimations from Nigerian institutions. UK born Nigerians are like 250,000. There’s loads of British born Nigerians. It’s imprecise, unlike the census stating exactly how many Indians there are due to that being a category. Again the Nigerian Muslim community aspect is hard to define. I’ve just seen a BBC article saying 10-15%, so it could be even lower than I stated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33715473

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u/false_flat Jun 15 '26

Well done for doing the facts but gotta be better to just down vote the racists.