Islam in Denmark: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Denmark

The Kingdom of Denmark (excluding the Faroe Islands and Greenland) has an area of 43,094 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 4.4.1. Islam is relatively new in this country, as Muslims started migrating after 1968 to supply the country’s need of manpower. Censuses in Denmark do not collect information on religious affiliations of the population. Nevertheless, Statistics Denmark does collect information on the citizenship, country of birth and country of origin of the population in Denmark. From this data we can infer the number of Muslims in Denmark. The number of Turkish citizens who had residence or work permit increased from 41 in 1960, to 85 in 1965 to 1,852 in 1970. At the same period other Muslim nationalities were not present in Denmark. In 1975, there were 1,292 Moroccans, 4,982 Pakistanis, and 8,129 Turks.

Since 1980, Statistics Denmark started publishing on yearly basis the country of origin of its population, which it defined as follows:

• If none of the parents are known, the country of origin is defined from the information on the person in question. If the person is an immigrant, the country of origin is the same as the country of birth. If the person is a descendant, the country of origin is the same as the country of citizenship.
• If only one of the parents is known, the country of origin is defined from by person’s country of birth.
• If both parents are known, the country of origin is defined by the country of birth or the country of citizenship of the mother.

Thus, with the assumption that those of Muslim-majority countries origin are Muslim, we construct Table 4.4.1a, summarizing the top countries of origin with Muslim majority sorted by the number of descendants from such countries. Out of these numbers,

• the percentage of those born in a Muslim majority country decreased from 91% in 1980, to 77% in 1990, to 72% in 1995, to 71% in 2000, to 67% in 2005, to 64% in 2010, to 63% in 2015 and 2020.
• The percentage of non-Danish citizens decreased from 94% in 1980, to 88% in 1985, to 86% in 1990, to 78% in 1995, to 70% in 2000, to 53% in 2005, to 45% in 2010, then increased to 46% in 2015 and 48% in 2020.

All in all, and as shown in Table 4.4.1b, the Muslim population increased from none before WWII, to 41 in 1960, to 85 in 1965, to 2,000 or 0.04% in 1970, to 14,000 or 0.3% in 1975, to 28,000 or 0.6% in 1980, to 37,000 or 0.7% in 1985, to 71,000 or 1.4% in 1990, to 0.11 million or 2.1% in 1995, to 0.17 million or 3.2% in 2000, to 0.21 million or 3.9% in 2005, to 0.23 million or 4.2% in 2010, to 0.27 million or 4.7% in 2015 and 0.32 million or 5.5% in 2020. According to EVS data, the percentage of Muslims increased from 0.42% in 1990, to 0.55% in 1999, to 0.45% in 2008, to 1.12% in 2017.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will continue to increase by two percentage points per decade; then the Muslim population is expected to reach 0.8 million or 12% by 2050 and 1.6 million or 22% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Denmark

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.