Islam in Finland

Islam is a minority religion in Finland. The first Muslims were Tatars who immigrated mainly between 1870 and 1920. After that there were decades with generally a small number of immigration in Finland. Since the late 20th century the number of Muslims in Finland has increased rapidly due to immigration. Nowadays, there are dozens of Islamic communities in Finland, but only a minority of Muslims have joined them. Pew Research Center estimates that about 2.7% of Finland's 5.5 million population is Muslim. In the high migration scenario, Finland's Muslim population could grow to 15% by 2050. In December 2017 the city of Helsinki rejected a proposal to build a large mosque financed by funds from Bahrain. The application was rejected as it was unclear which movement of Islam would dominate its prayers and the attendant risk of radicalization and conflict between different religious communities.

Baltic Tatars

The Baltic Tatars arrived in Finland as merchants and soldiers at the end of the 19th century. They were later joined by other family members. The Finnish Islamic Association (Finnish: Suomen Islam-seurakunta) was founded in 1925. In practice, this society only accepts people from Tatar origin, or Turkic origin in general, as members, excluding non-Turkic speaking Muslims. The Finnish Tatars's Islamic congregations have a total of about 1,000 members these days.

Modern immigration

The number of immigrants, and Muslims as well, in Finland rose considerably in the early 1990s. Soon new immigrants established their own mosques and societies. In 1996 these groups came together to form a cooperative organ - the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Finland. It is estimated that approximately 1,000 Finns have converted to Islam. The vast majority of these are women who have married Muslim men.

Hundreds Muslim asylum seekers from Iraq and Afghanistan convert to Christianity after having had their first asylum application rejected by the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), in order to re-apply for asylum on the grounds of religious persecution.

In May 2018, the Minister of Justice Annti Häkkänen responded to academics who had demanded that sharia law and other laws from foreign cultures. He stated that "religion or culture can never justify abuse of women and children, such has female genital mutilation or child marriage. Human rights apply to all equally."

Islamic societies

Table 1: Largest Islamic Societies in Finland 2009

Name	Registered	Home	Members
Finnish Islamic Association	1925	Helsinki	567
Islamic Society of Finland	1987	Helsinki	1 097
Helsinki Islamic Center	1995	Helsinki	1 817
Tampere Islamic Society	1998	Tampere	837
Islamic Rahma Center in Finland	1998	Helsinki	575
Islamic Society of Northern Finland	2000	Oulu	361
Resalat islamilainen yhdyskunta	2001	Vantaa	486

There are dozens of independent Islamic societies in Finland. The oldest one is Finnish Islamic Association which was established in 1925. It has about 700 members of whom all are Tatars. The society has mosques in Helsinki, Tampere and Lahti. The only building established only as mosque in Finland is Järvenpää mosque.

The Islamic Society of Finland was established in 1987. Its members are mainly Arabs, but also Finnish converts. The society has a mosque and Koran school in Helsinki. The Helsinki Islamic Center is currently the biggest society with almost 2,000 members. Furthermore, there are a dozen other Islamic societies in Helsinki region, some of them are not officially registered.

Most of mosques are multilingual, but the most commonly used languages are usually English and Finnish. Religious services are held in Arabic.

Muslim majority ethnic groups by language

Numbers are based on the Statistics Finland (language, 2017).

• Arabic language (26,467)
• Somali language (20,007)
• Kurdish language (13,327)
• Persian language (12,090)
• Albanian language (10,391)
• Turkish language (7,739)
• Bengali language (3,599)
• Urdu language (2,983)
• Bosnian language (2,322)
• Punjabi language (1,028)
• Chechen language (636)
• Uzbek language (604)
• Indonesian language (589)
• Azerbaijani language (467)
• Turkmen language (447)

Total: 102,696

Gallery

• 
  6 Islamic, 15 English, and 76 German coins, latest coin dates from 1006-1029 - National Museum of Finland

See also

• Finnish Islamic Party
• A Moment in the Reeds, 2017 film

External links

• Report on Islam: Finnish Islam arises slowly (in Finnish).
• Finnish Islamic Congregation (in Finnish).
• Some of the mosques in Finland (map)