According to the latest figures issued by Statistics Netherlands, approximately 5 percent of the Dutch population, i.e. 850 thousand persons, were followers of Islam in 2006.
Statistics Netherlands has recently begun to use survey data to estimate the number of Muslims in the Netherlands. This switch leads to more reliable estimates than the calculation method employed so far. In the survey, people themselves report what religious denomination they belong to and Islam is one of the options. The new estimates result in a smaller Muslim population. According to the old calculation method, the Muslim population in the Netherlands had crossed the 1 million mark in 2006.
According to the survey data, there are 850 thousand Muslims in the Netherlands, i.e. approximately 5 percent of the population. This implies that nearly half of people with a non-western background living in the Netherlands adhere to Islam. Turks (nearly 325 thousand) and Moroccans (over 260 thousand) constitute the largest groups of Muslims.
With 34 thousand, Surinamese constitute the largest group of Muslims within the group of other persons with a non-western background, followed by Afghans (31 thousand) and Iraqis (27 thousand). Lastly, there are 12 thousand native Dutch Muslims.