Islam in Guadeloupe: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Guadeloupe

It is an overseas region of France which was captured in 1814. It has an area of 1,628 sq km comprising six inhabited islands and dozens of much smaller islands around them. The inhabited islands are the main islands Basse-Terre (848 sq km) on the west and Grande-Terre (587 sq km) on the east, the nearby smaller islands of Marie-Galante (158 sq km), La Desirade (21 sq km), Terre-de-Bas (7 sq km) and Terre-de-Haut (6 sq km).

Guadeloupe was given its name by Columbus when he visited the Island in 1493 on his second voyage after “Santa Maria de la Guadeloupe” in Extremadura, Spain. The Island was taken over by the French in 1635 as part of their “Compagnie des Iles d’Amerique” then became part of the French royal domain in 1674 as a dependency of Martinique, then became a separate colony in 1775. The British conquered the Island in 1759-1763 and in 1810-1816.

The original Caribs were exterminated and replaced by enslaved Africans whose numbers reached 93,000 in 1848 who were freed based on the abolishment of slavery in the same year. Some of those were Muslims but there is no record of the size and Islam was not preserved among their descendants. In 1854, France started bringing indentured laborers here from its colonies in India. Then in 1861, France signed a convention with the British to bring more workers from the British Indian territories to its Caribbean possessions. This Indian immigration lasted 35 years until 1889, bringing a total of 42,326 Indians to Guadeloupe. Of these 9,460 Indians returned home after the expiration of their contracts and 32,866 Indians remained in Guadeloupe. It is estimated that 14.5% of these numbers were Muslims. In other words, a total of 6,140 Muslims were brought from India over the 35-year period, of whom 4,770 remain in the islands, but few of their descendants remained Muslim.

The third wave of Muslim migration was by Arabs from the Middle East before WWII and the fourth in 1970s from Senegal and Guadeloupian returnees from France who embraced Islam there. Thus, estimates of the Muslim population changed from 3,200 or 2.3% in 1889 to 3,000 or 1.5% in 1908. The Muslim population then changed to 1,000 or 0.3% in 1990, to 2,000 or 0.5% in 2008 and 2,500 or 0.6% in 2018. The data is summarized in Table 5.3.3. Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will increase by a tenth of a percentage point per decade; then the Muslim population in Guadeloupe is expected to remain less than each 5,000 throughout this century, reaching 0.9% by 2050 and 1.4% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Guadeloupe

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.