Islam is the second-largest religion in the United Kingdom, with results from the 2021-2022 Censuses recording just under four million Muslims, or 6.0% of the total population in the United Kingdom. London has the largest population and greatest proportion (15%) of Muslims in the country. The vast majority of British Muslims in the United Kingdom adhere to Sunni Islam,UK Masjid Statistics Muslims In Britain (18 August 2010) while smaller numbers are associated with Shia Islam.

During the Middle Ages, there was limited cultural exchange between Christendom and the Islamic world. There was no established Muslim presence in the British Isles, though a small number of Crusaders are recorded as having converted in the East, including Robert of St Albans. During the Elizabethan era, contacts became more explicit as the Tudors pursued diplomatic and commercial relations with Muslim powers, including the Ottoman Empire, in part to counter Catholic Habsburg Spain.

As the British Empire expanded, Britain came to rule territories with large Muslim populations; some Muslim seamen (lascars) are known to have settled in Britain from the mid-18th century onwards. In the 19th century, Victorian Orientalism contributed to growing interest in Islam and a number of Britons, including members of the aristocracy, converted. Marmaduke Pickthall, an English writer and convert to Islam, produced the first complete English-language translation of the Qur'an by a British Muslim in 1930. Under the British Indian Army, large numbers of Muslims fought for the United Kingdom during the First and Second World Wars, with some receiving the Victoria Cross. In the decades after the Second World War—particularly following the partition of India in 1947-many Muslims from what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh settled permanently in Britain.

Today, British Muslims are ethnically diverse. South Asians form the largest share of Muslims in Britain, alongside significant Turkish, Arab, and Somali communities, as well as an estimated 100,000 British converts from a range of backgrounds. Muslims have the youngest average age profile among the major religious groups in the United Kingdom. The Muslim population has grown significantly in recent decades, at a rate several times faster than the population overall. Recent broad estimates suggest around 5,000–6,000 people convert to Islam each year, with women forming the majority in survey-based studies.

History Early history

The earliest evidence of Islamic influence in England dates to the 8th century when Offa, the Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia, minted a coin with an Arabic inscription, largely a copy of coins issued by a contemporary Abbasid ruler Caliph Al-Mansur. In the 16th century, Muslims from North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia were present in London, working in a range of roles, from diplomats and translators to merchants and musicians.

In 1627, the Salé Rovers, from the Republic of Salé (in modern-day Morocco) occupied the English island of Lundy for five years. The Barbary pirates, under the command of the Dutch Muslim Jan Janszoon, flew an Ottoman flag over the island. Slaving raids were made embarking from Lundy by the Barbary pirates, and captured Europeans were held on Lundy before being sent to Algiers to be sold as slaves.

Interactions under British Empire

Bengal was annexed by the East India Company from the quasi-independent Nawabs of Bengal following the Battle of Plassey in 1757. The manufactured goods produced in Bengal directly contributed to the Industrial Revolution in Britain,Shombit Sengupta, Bengals plunder gifted the British Industrial Revolution , The Financial Express, 8 February 2010 with the textiles produced in Bengal being used to support British industries such as textile manufacturing, aided by the invention of devices such as the spinning jenny. With the establishment of Crown control in India after 1857, the British Empire came to rule over a large Muslim population.David Motadel (2014), Islam and the European Empires, page 267, Oxford University PressFrancis Robinson (2001), The British Empire and the Muslim world , The Oxford History of the British Empire, volume 4, pages 398-420, Oxford University Press The first educated South Asian to travel to Europe and live in Britain was I'tisam-ud-Din, a Bengali Muslim cleric, munshi and diplomat to the Mughal Empire who arrived in 1765 with his servant Muhammad Muqim during the reign of King George III.C.E. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography, Haskell House Publishers Ltd, 1968, p.217 He wrote of his experiences and travels in his Persian book, (or 'Wonder Book of Europe').

In South Asia, specifically, the British ruled over one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. Upon coming into contact with such a population, the British authorities forged a uniquely Muslim identity for the local believers. This was, in part, due to the way British historians periodised South Asian history into an "ancient" Hindu one and a "medieval" Muslim one. Under the system, the colonial period was classified as "modern". Debate rages on concerning the utility and legitimacy of these labels themselves. Problems with these labels range from the connotations coupled with the word 'medieval' to the implications related to labelling the colonial era as "modern". The term medieval itself is quite controversial. Historians writing in journals relating to the time period have asked whether the term is a "tyrannous construct" or an "alien conceptual hegemony". This is because the label was originally developed during the study of European history to mark the period in between the fall of the Roman Empire and the fall of Constantinople.

Such classifications done by British historians throughout their long period of rule paved the way for a more cohesive Muslim identity. In the eighteenth century, this seemed unlikely. Muslims who hailed from Afghan, Turk, Persian, or Arab roots did not find their Muslim identities especially salient. Mughal courts divided not into Hindu or Muslim factions but Persian and Turkish ones. Converts to the religion outside of courtly life, the majority of the Muslim population in the Subcontinent, too were more focused on their regional and lingual cultural identities-whether that be Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, or Gujarati.

The first group of Muslims to come to Great Britain in significant numbers, in the 18th century, were lascars (sailors) recruited from the Indian subcontinent, largely from the Bengal region, to work for the East India Company on British ships, some of whom settled down and took local wives. Due to the majority being lascars, the earliest Muslim communities were found in port towns. Naval cooks also came, many of them from the Sylhet district of British Bengal (now in Bangladesh). One of the most famous early Asian immigrants to England was the Bengali Muslim entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomet, a captain of the East India Company who in 1810 founded London's first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House.

Between 1803 and 1813, there were more than 10,000 lascars from the Indian subcontinent visiting British port cities and towns. By 1842, 3,000 lascars visited the UK annually, and by 1855, 12,000 lascars were arriving annually in British ports. In 1873, 3,271 lascars arrived in Britain. Throughout the early 19th century lascars visited Britain at a rate of 1,000 every year, which increased to a rate of 10,000 to 12,000 every year throughout the late 19th century. A prominent English convert of the 19th century was Henry Stanley, 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley, who became a Muslim in 1862. Although not a convert himself, the Victorian Age adventurer, Sir Richard Francis Burton visited Mecca in disguise, documented in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. At the beginning of World War I, there were 51,616 South Asian lascars working on British ships, the majority of whom were of Bengali descent. In 1932, the Indian National Congress survey of 'all Indians outside India' (which included modern Pakistani and Bangladeshi territories) estimated that there were 7,128 Indians living in the United Kingdom.

By 1911, the British Empire had a Muslim population of 94 million, larger than the empire's 58 million Christian population. By the 1920s, the British Empire included roughly half of the world's Muslim population. More than 400,000 Muslim soldiers of the British Indian Army fought for Britain during World War I, where 62,060 were killed in action.The 'forgotten' army of 400,000 Muslim soldiers who fought for British freedom in World War I , Daily Mirror, 9 January 2017 Muslim soldiers of the British Indian Army later fought for Britain against the Nazis in World War II,Ziauddin Sardar (2012), Critical Muslim 2: The Idea of Islam, page 131, Oxford University Press where Muslim soldiers accounted for up to 40% of the 2.5 million troops serving the British Indian Army. David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, stated: "we are the greatest Mahomedan power in the world and one-fourth of the population of the British Empire is Mahomedan. There have been no more loyal adherents to the throne and no more effective and loyal supporters of the Empire in its hour of trial." This statement was later reiterated by Gandhi in 1920. Winston Churchill also stated in 1942: "We must not on any account break with the Moslems, who represent a hundred million people, and the main army elements on which we must rely for the immediate fighting."

The Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking was the first purpose-built mosque in Britain, and was built in 1889. In the same year, Abdullah Quilliam installed a mosque in a terrace in Liverpool, which became the Liverpool Muslim Institute. The first mosque in London was the Fazl Mosque, established in 1924, commonly called the London mosque.

Quran translators Yusuf Ali and Marmaduke Pickthall, who authored The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation in 1930, were both trustees of the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking and the East London Mosque.Khizar Humayun Ansari, 'Ali, Abdullah Yusuf (1872–1953)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oct 2012; online edn, Jan 2013 accessed 6 February 2020

Other aristocratic British converts included Sir Archibald Hamilton, 5th Baronet, Rowland Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley, St John Philby and Zainab Cobbold (the first Muslim woman born in Britain to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca).

Immigration and post-World War II

Large-scale immigration of Muslims to Britain began after World War II, as a result of the destruction and labour shortages caused by the war.MariaCaterina La Barbera (2014), Identity and Migration in Europe: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, page 230, Springer Science+Business MediaRichard D. Hecht, Vincent F. Biondo (2010), Religion and Everyday Life and Culture, page 859, ABC-CLIO Muslim migrants from former British colonies, predominantly India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (East Pakistan until 1971), were recruited in large numbers by government and businesses to rebuild the country.Muslim Migration to Europe , University of Minnesota, 17 June 2015 Large numbers of doctors recruited from India and Pakistan also played a role in the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS).How migrants helped make the NHS , The Guardian, 18 June 2008