Almost a tenth of births in England and Wales now are Muslim - census

One in ten children under the age of four is now Muslim in England and Wales, the latest statistics show.

In the under-fives age group there are nearly twice as many people identified as Muslim as in the general population, census data reveals.

That proportion is more than 9 per cent and compares with a total Muslim population among all age groups of less than 5 per cent.

There were 1.6 million Muslims in England and Wales in 2001, or 3 per cent of the population, according to the census. By 2011 the Muslim population had grown to 2.7 million people or 4.8 per cent of the population.

‘It certainly is a startling figure,’ said David Coleman, Professor of Demography at the University of Oxford. ‘We have had substantial immigration of Muslims for a long time.

‘Continuing immigration from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India has been added to by new immigration from African countries and from the Middle East. Birth rates of Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin remain quite high, although falling. There seem to be very low levels of falling away from religion among Muslims.’

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