Islam in Belarus: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Belarus

The Republic of Belarus gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. It has an area of 207,600 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 4.2.1. Islam entered Belarus through Muslim Tatars from the Golden Horde Empire in the thirteenth century but remained a small minority of tens of thousands by the end of the sixteenth century.

The 1897 Russian Empire census indicated that the Muslim population was 9,609 or 0.15% of the total population of Belarus in its current borders. This estimate is based on the data from the Governorates of Minsk, Moghilev, Vilna excluding Vilensky, Sventsiansky and Troksky Uyezds which are in Lithuania and where all the Muslims in this governorate lived, Vitebsk excluding Dinaburgsky, Lucinsky and Rezhitsky Uyezds which are in Latvia, Grodno excluding Bialystok, Belsky and Sokolsky Uyezds which are in Poland.

Censuses since 1926 collected ethnic affiliation demography of the population. The top twenty Muslim ethnicities in Belarus from largest in number are Tatar, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kazakh, Arab, Tajik, Afghan, Turks, Bashkir, Lezgin, Persian, Chechen, Avar, Kyrgyz, Darghin, Ingush, Kabardian, Lak, Tabasaran, Adyghei and Karakalpak. The number of members of each of these ethnicities since 1926 is provided in Table 4.2.1a. Based on ethnic censuses, the Muslim population decreased to 4,000 or 0.1% in 1926, then bounced back to 12,000 or 0.2% in 1939, and continued its slow increase to 13,000 or 0.2% in 1959, to 16,000 or 0.2% in 1970, to 20,000 or 0.2% in 1979, to 30,000 or 0.3% in 1989. The Muslim population decreased since then after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 as various ethnicities started returning to their country of origin. Thus, the Muslim population changed to 25,000 or 0.3% in 1999, to 26,000 or 0.3% in 2009, to 28,000 or 0.3% in 2019.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will continue to increase by 0.02 of a percentage point; then the Muslim population is expected to remain around 30,000 throughout this century, comprising 0.4% of the total population by 2050 and 0.5% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Belarus

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.