Islam in Virgin Islands, British: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Virgin Islands, British

The Virgin Islands were sighted by Christopher Columbus in 1493 who named them Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Virgenes, shortened to Las Virgenes, after Saint Ursula and her 11,000 virgins! Historically they included BVI, USVI which used to be Danish until 1917, and the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra, which were Spanish until 1898.

The BVI was conquered by the British from the Dutch in 1672 and remains an overseas territory of the UK but uses the US Dollar as its official currency. It has an area of 151 sq km comprised of sixteen inhabited and more than twenty uninhabited islands. The main islands are Tortola (56 sq km), Anegada (38 sq km), Virgin Gorda (21 sq km), and Jost van Dyke (5 sq km). However, most of the population lives in Tortola (83%) and Virgin Gorda (13%).

According to census data as shown in Table 5.3.9, the Muslim population increased from none in 1946 and before, to 34 or 0.3% in 1980, to 102 or 0.6% in 1991, to 196 or 0.9% in 2001 and 266 or 1.0% in 2010. In the last census, the Muslim Population was distributed as follows: 256 in Tortola (1.1% of its population), six in Anegada (2.3% of its population) and four in Virgin Gorda (0.1%).

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will continue to increase by a tenth of a percentage point per decade; then the Muslim population is expected to remain less than one thousand throughout this century, reaching 2% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Virgin Islands, British

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.