BRITAIN’S MUSLIM POPULATION RISES 37 PERCENT IN 7 YEARS

         London, 2 Rabiul Akhir 1434/12 February 2013 (MINA) – The exact figure of Muslim immigration living in Britain has been revealed in new census figures. According to the census, in the past seven years the number of Muslims living in the UK has risen by 37 percent to 2.6 million.
        The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that the number of neighborhoods that have a majority of Muslim residents has nearly doubled over the past decade. The statistics revealed that a total of 34 wards in England and Wales have more than 50 percent Indian or Pakistani residents, which is up from 19 wards in 2001, the Daily Star reported.
        Meanwhile, the ward with the highest proportion of Indian and Pakistani people is Latimer in Leicester at 81 percent. Ten of the 34 wards where more than 50 percent of the residents are Indian and Pakistani are in the North West, seven are in Yorkshire and Humberside and another seven in London, according to IINA report monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA), Tuesday.
       A spokesman for the Henry Jackson Society thinktank said that “the fundamental dynamics of British society are changing, in no small part due to the drastic differences in the religious and ethnic make-up of the UK’.
       Julie Siddiqi, of the Islamic Society of Britain, said that “many of Britain’s Muslims are now third generation migrants which mean not only were they born in Britain but their parents were too. English is the main language spoken at home for most of them.”
       Earlier, figures from the 2011 census have revealed that the Muslim population in Britain has almost doubled in ten years so that Muslims make up 50 percent of the residents in some British towns.
       Between 2001 and 2011, the Muslim population rose from 1.5 million to 2.7 million, an increase from 3 percent to 4.8 percent of Britain’s overall population. According to ONS that conducted the census, the multiplying of Britain’s Muslim population has occurred for several reasons.
       The ONS said an important reason for the massive growth in Muslims in Britain is the rising number of Britons who are choosing to convert to Islam. There are estimates that hundreds of Britons convert to Islam every month, making a significant contribution to the steadily increasing number of Muslims in the country. (T/P03/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)