Islam in Bahrain: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Bahrain

The Kingdom of Bahrain was occupied by the British in late nineteenthcentury and gained its independence from the UK in 1971. It is an Islandnation with an area of 760 sq km consisting of the main island of Bahrain(558 sq km) and 32 nearby much smaller islands, the largest of which areHawar (50 sq km), Umm an Na’san (19 sq km), Muharraq (18 sq km) andSitrah (10 sq km). The surface area of this country is gradually expandingthrough reclamation of land from the nearby shallow sea and theconstruction of dozens of man-made small islands connected by a seriesof bridges to the main island.

In 628, Prophet Muhammad sent his companion Al-Ala bnulHadrami as an envoy to Munther bnu Sawa Attamimi, the ruler ofthe historical region of Bahrain, which included current Kuwait, Bahrain,Qatar, and East of Saudi Arabia. The Prophet invited this ruler to Islam,which he accepted along with his population and Muslims remained themajority of the population of the whole region since then. The entirepopulation was estimated to be Muslim by the turn of the twentiethcentury. The first census was conducted in 1941 and subsequent censuseswere held each decade and they did include religious information. Asshown in Table 2.3.1, these censuses show a constant decrease in thepercentage of the Muslim population from 98% in 1941, to 70% in 2010.This is due to the discovery of Oil and the subsequent import of foreignworkers, some of which are non-Muslim. Indeed, the census data showthat the Muslim population increased in number but decreased inpercentage from 0.09 million or 98.1% in 1941, to 0.11 million or 96.1% in1950, to 0.14 million or 94.8% in 1959, to 0.17 million or 95.3% in 1965, to0.21 million or 95.7% in 1971, to 0.30 million or 85.0% in 1981, to 0.42million or 81.8% in 1991, to 0.53 million or 81.2% in 2001, to 0.87 millionor 70.2% in 2010, and then increased both in number and percentage to1.11 million or 74.0% in 2020.

Assuming that this percentage remains constant; then the Muslimpopulation is expected to reach 1.3 million by 2050 and 1.5 million by2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Bahrain

The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.

For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.