Islam by country · Americas
Islam in Costa Rica: history and Muslim population data
Explore CoMPS research on the historical journey of Islam in Costa Rica, alongside population data and an interactive timeline.
Open Costa Rica in the interactive map
History of Islam in Costa Rica
The Republic of Costa Rica gained its independence from Spain in 1821. It has an area of 51,100 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 5.6.2. First Muslims came from Palestine in early twentieth century. As shown in Table 5.6.2, censuses in the nineteenth century showed no presence of Muslims in Costa Rica. Later estimates showed an increase from none in 1908, to 100 or 0.01% in 1973, to 500 or 0.01% in 2000 and 2011, to 1,000 or 0.02% in 2022.
Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will increase by 0.01 of a percentage points per decade, then the Muslim population is expected to reach few thousands or 0.1% throughout the second half of this century.
Historical Muslim population dataset for Costa Rica
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.
| Year | Total population (thousands) | Muslim population (thousands) | Muslim share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 297.0 | 0.000 | 0.00% |
| 2000 | 3,941 | 0.394 | 0.01% |
| 2100 | 4,548 | 4.55 | 0.10% |
For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.