Islam in Sweden: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Sweden

Currently, the Kingdom of Sweden has an area of 450,295 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 4.4.10. Like Finland, the first Muslims to come to Sweden were Tatars, who migrated in the seventeenth century. According to census data, the number of Muslims increased from one in 1910, to six in 1920 to fifteen in 1930. Later censuses in Sweden did not inquire on the number of Muslims in the country. Nevertheless, Statistics Sweden does collect information on the country of birth of the population in Sweden. From this data, we can infer the number of Muslims in Sweden with the assumption that those born in Muslim-majority countries are Muslim.

Thus, the percentage of Muslims in Sweden was less than 0.01% until 1960; increasing in number from none in the nineteenth century, to one in 1910, to six in 1920, to fifteen in 1930, to 300 in 1950, to 700 or 0.01% in 1960. The increase of Muslims picked up momentum afterwards due to the country’s need for immigrant workers as its economy improved. Accordingly, the Muslim population increased to 8,000 or 0.1% in 1970, to 12,000 or 0.2% in 1975, to 30,000 or 0.4% in 1980, to 50,000 or 0.6% in 1985. The number of Muslims continued to increase to 0.11 million or 1.3% in 1990, to 0.21 million or 2.4% in 1995, to 0.26 million or 2.9% in 2000, to 0.32 million or 3.5% in 2005, to 0.44 million or 4.7% in 2010, to 0.61 million or 6.2% in 2015 and 0.83 million or 8.0% in 2020. A significant portion of the increase is due to an influx of refugees from Muslim majority war torn countries such as Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia and Syria. According to EVS data, the percentage of Muslims increased from 0.11% in 1982, to 0.56% in 1999, to 1.06% in 2008, to 1.54% 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 close to two million or 15% by 2050 and over three million or 25% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Sweden

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.