Islam in Nepal: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Nepal

The Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal has an area of 147,181 sq kmand its map is presented in Figure 2.5.5a. It did not come under Muslimcontrol but was influenced by the spread of Islam in India. Thus, Islamentered here in the fifteenth century with Muslim settlers from Kashmir,and the first mosque was built in 1524.

Early estimates showed that the number of Muslims increased from1,000 or 0.3% in 1891, to 3,500 or 0.06% of the total population. Based oncensus data as shown in Table 2.5.5, the Muslim population increaseddramatically since then. Accordingly, Muslims increased from 0.21million or 2.5% in 1954, to 0.28 million or 3.0% in 1961, to 0.35 million or3.0% in 1971, to 0.40 million or 2.7% in 1981, to 0.65 million or 3.5% in1991, to 0.95 million or 4.2% in 2001, to 1.16 million or 4.4% in 2011

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will continue toincrease by a fifth of a percentage point per decade; then the Muslimpopulation is expected to reach 1.9 million or 5.2% by 2050 and 2.1million or 6.2% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Nepal

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.