Islam in Brazil: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Brazil

The Federative Republic of Brazil has an area of 8,514,877 sq km and is the fifth largest country in the world.It was conquered by Portugal in 1500 and gained its independence in 1822. The first post-Columbian wave of Muslims came from Portugal in the sixteenth century. They were the remnants of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula and were called Moriscos. But anyone who was discovered as Muslim was forced to be Christian or be burned alive. Thus, this wave was lost.

The second wave came as the Portuguese brought slaves from Africa towards the end of the eighteenth century. Many of these slaves were Muslims. They rebelled in 1835 to gain some freedom, but they were crushed by the Portuguese. Many Muslims who survived returned to Africa, where they have descendants in Benin and neighboring countries. Thus, Islam went extinct again in Brazil.

The third wave came in 1860, as many Arabs, some of whom were Muslims, fled the Ottoman Empire from Syria and Lebanon. However, according to census data, the Muslim population remained less than 0.01% of the total population until 1950, changing in from 300 in 1890, to 123 in 1900, to 3,053 in 1940, to 3,454 in 1950, to 7,745 in 1960. The percentage of Muslims then increased to 0.02%, numbering 22,449 in 1991, then 27,239 in 2000, and 35,167 in 2010. Nevertheless, the results of these censuses are widely challenged by Muslims in Brazil and independent researchers. They claim that the number of Muslims is ten to hundred times what these censuses report.

Thus, from census data, and assuming that the percentage of Muslims will increase by 0.01 of a percentage point every half century; then the Muslim population is expected to remain less than 0.1 million throughout this century, comprising 0.04% of the population by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Brazil

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.