Population of Muslims in Europe steadily increasing

olamide oni

November 16, 2015 10:06 AM

The recent attack in Paris has brought a lot of attention to the population of Muslims in the state.

Women comfort each other as they stand in front of the Carillon cafe, in Paris, on Nov. 14, 2015.

The Muslim share of Europe’s total population has been increasing steadily by about 1 percentage point a decade – from 4 per cent in 1990 to 6 per cent in 2010.

At the moment, the number of Muslims in the state comes to about 44million. Interestingly, France has the highest proportion of Muslims of any major nation in Western Europe. The embattled city, Paris and its metropolitan area also has more Muslims than any other city in the EU – an estimated 1.7million.

Questions are now being raised on whether these Paris suburbs are an ‘incubator for terrorism’. It also helps to explain why Paris appears to be a more fruitful recruiting ground for Islamic State than cities in some other western countries.

The French Government has been doing its best to prevent young Muslims from veering towards extremism, but the effort has been proving futile.

READ: 15 photos from night of terror

According to reports from Dailymail, terrorism in France, resentment among some disaffected young Muslims, who often face discrimination in employment and housing.The Islamic Human Rights Commission has condemned Friday's attack on Paris in a statement thus;

‘The cold-blooded murder of scores of innocent civilians ... can find no justification anywhere, let alone in the tenets of a world faith followed by over one-and-a-half billion people.

‘However we should not let our anger and condemnation of a depraved group obscure the fact that western intervention in the Middle East is responsible for both the origins and continued strength of [IS].’

olamide oni