Muslim Population Growth in Britain
There are approximately 4 million Muslim residents in Britain, making up 6 percent of the country's population. This number increased from 1.6 million in 2001. The single largest group of Muslims in the United Kingdom are of Pakistani descent, who were one of the first Muslim communities to permanently settle in the United Kingdom, arriving in England first in the late 1940s. Immigration from Mirpur, a city in the Pakistani part of Kashmir, grew from the late 1950s. These people had worked in the large dam built by a British company on the Jhelum River and moved to England to work in the houses of contractors engaged in building the Mangla Dam. London has the largest Muslim population. Most Muslims in the country belong to the Sunni sect of Islam, but a large number of the Ahmadiyya community also migrated to Britain.
Conversion and Demographic Trends
The Muslim population in Britain has grown significantly in recent years, at a rate several times faster than the population overall. Recent estimates suggest that around 5,000-6,000 people convert to Islam every year, the majority being women. The first group of Muslims to go to Great Britain in significant numbers was in the 18th century, mostly sailors recruited from Bengal under British rule. Later troubles in their homelands led to Muslim migration to Britain, including the Arab Spring which brought a wave of Muslim refugees from Syria, and wars in what was once Yugoslavia brought Muslims from Kosovo to Britain.
Demographic Changes and Racial Violence
Demographic changes are resulting in racial violence in the West, including the United States and Western Europe. As human fertility declines below 2.1 children per woman, the population size declines and average age increases. Declining and older populations are not economically dynamic, so young people are needed to keep economies robust. This has led the West to turn to migration from countries in the Global South. Those coming into the West are mostly people of colour and followers of faiths other than Christianity, resulting in an increase in Islamophobia in several Western nations. This is the case in Britain, where the anti-immigrant nationalist Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage, has been steadily moving from the fringes to mainstream politics. With eight members in Parliament, it consistently tops polls and is increasingly talked about winning the next general election, beating both the Conservative and Labour Parties.
Far-Right Incidents and Political Rhetoric
Farage used the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old student in Southampton, whose death was caused by a knife attack by a Sikh immigrant. In their religion, Sikhs are meant to carry kirpans, knives with large sharp blades. The Nowak death stoked the British right. Farage reacted as follows: "Our leaders would like to see a two-tier culture in this country, where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities" and urged Britons to respond with "pure, cold rage." A more explicitly far-right party, Restore Britain, formed by lawmaker Rupert Lowe, a breakaway from Reform and endorsed by President Trump, responded by saying in a long post on X that "enough is enough" and that keeping alive the "savage" who killed Nowak served nobody. While this incident involved a British-born Sikh, most of the anger was aimed at migrants, focused on Muslims who have come into the country.
Mainstreaming of Racist Ideas
As Daniel Trilling wrote in his book If We Tolerate This, flagrantly racist ideas and claims that would have been beyond the pale just over a decade ago now circulate among conservative newspapers and politicians as they struggle to keep up with the rage-bait of far-right influencers. In 2025, for instance, up-and-coming Conservative lawmaker Katie Lam told The Times that migrants, even if they were legal residents, needed to "go home," leaving Britain more "culturally coherent." As William Davies, the author of This is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain, said, "The ascent of the far-right in Britain has been acquiring a feeling of inevitability, as if it can be delayed or slowed but never really reversed. Its opponents urgently need their own figureheads and movements if they are to demonstrate that they can do more than throw up their hands."
Historical Racism and Muslim Responses
There was overt racism directed at the Muslim population in Britain, taking the form of "Paki bashing" predominantly from white power skinheads, the National Front, and the British National Party throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Young Pakistani and Bangladeshi citizens of Britain mounted their movements to deal with racism. Muslim migrants to Britain brought their religion with them. The Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, built in 1889, was the first purpose-built mosque in the country. In the same year, a mosque in a terrace was built in Liverpool which became the Liverpool Muslim Institute. The first mosque in London was the Fazl Mosque built in 1924. British scholars made important contributions to the study of Islam and the impact of the religion on the West. A prominent British scholar translated the Quran into English.
Political Implications
The decision by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to leave his office would create space for the parties that are hostile to all immigration, in particular that from the Muslim world.
