Europe, which includes 50 countries and territories, has about
38 million Muslims, constituting about 5% of its population.
European Muslims make up slightly more than 2% of the world's
Muslim population. Readers should bear in mind that estimates of
the numbers of Muslims in Europe vary widely because of the
difficulty of counting new immigrants. Nevertheless, it is clear
that most European Muslims live in eastern and central Europe.
The country with the largest Muslim population in Europe is
Russia, with more than 16 million Muslims, meaning that more
than four-in-ten European Muslims live in Russia. While most
Muslims in western Europe are relatively recent immigrants (or
children of immigrants) from Turkey, North Africa or South Asia,
most of those in Russia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Bulgaria belong to populations that are centuries old, meaning
that more than six-in-ten European Muslims are indigenous.
Despite the limitations of the underlying data for Europe, it
appears that Germany is ho