This is actually a pretty lame post. I really tried, I tried my very best to find information on how many people in Canada convert to Islam. This information is, as of today, simply not available to the public (or perhaps anyone).
But, I offer this as a cop-out. Information on the amount of people who convert to Islam in the United States. I think it reasonable to assume that the numbers would be very similar in Canada.
There's this one number, that since the mid 90's, around 20,000 people per year in the US convert to Islam. You see this one a lot.* This is a very small number for a country of 300 million people. It's only 0.000067% per annum. There's also a similar one of 25,000 the New York Times used once. That's still only 0.000083%. Using the upper-end number of 0.000083%, I think we can reasonably estimate that around 2600 people in Canada convert to Islam every year, being so similar to the US. But this would be "overblown" according to "theologians and demographers" referenced by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Conversion is a fairly insignificant area of growth for Islam in Canada, the main reason for growth is immigration. Muslim immigration to Canada is high. (Canadian Census data). In 1991 there were 253,300 Muslims in Canada. In 2001 there were 579,600. Of those 326,600 new Muslims, around 270,000 immigrated to Canada, and so, assuming 2600 converted each year, around 53,400 were born and stayed in Canada. It's impossible to get a truly accurate birthrate from this. But if we assume both those numbers are distributed evenly throughout those ten years (which creates a little inaccuracy for this purpose) and that the number emigrating from Canada is negligible (which may be true), we get a birthrate of around 21/1000 per annum which is much higher than the 2006/2007 Canadian total of 10.9/1000, though it seems very reasonable.
Keeping that birthrate going from 2001 we would end up with 643,000 in 2006 from natural growth, and keeping the trusty 2600, we would have 656,000 from birth and conversions. The officials report there is an estimated population of 783,700 Muslims in Canada in 2006. With our numbers, that would imply an immigration to Canada of about 127,000 in 5 years, which is pretty close to the rate of the official census amount of 270,000 in 10 years from 1991 to 2001. So the birthrate of 21/1000 per annum for Muslims in Canada seems like a reasonable estimate.
* You see this a lot though too: "Rates of conversion have gone up since 9/11!" As if to say, "Terrorism works!"
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7 comments:
Do you suppose that most of the conversions are of prison inmates, compared to the rest of the population?
It's hard to say jauhara.
My guess would be that non-Muslim women who have to convert in order to marry Muslim men form the bulk of conversions. Muslim men are encouraged to try to marry non-Muslim women, because this expands Islam evermore. That those are genuine conversions, and not conversions of convenience on the part of the women, seems doubtful...
I agree. However, another statistic of interest might be reversions. How many people, when they find out that Islam is just an Arab imperialist fantasy of world conquest and culture-erasure, revert to whatever religion they were before?
I'm not sure how many people leave Islam in Canada, there was essentially no information about that. Many Muslims in Canada live within a close-knit community, and it may be very difficult for them to stand up and say they are leaving the religion. Indeed, according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, the punishment for apostasy is death. How much influence these schools have in Canadian Muslim communities is unclear, but they no doubt have an influence. "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him." said Mohammed (Bukhari 9:84:57). So even if a statistically significant number of Muslims were leaving Islam in heart, they may not actually show up in the research.
Christians generally say that they have many Muslims come to their churches in a change of faith. A German Christian group reports that around 5000 Muslims a year join Christianity in Germany. Which is high percentage in comparison to Non-Muslim --> Muslim conversion in Canada, as Germany has a population of around 3.3M Muslims. But this number does not seem at all dependable.
This page says that 15,000 Muslims convert to Christianity every year in France.
This Times article has more related substance, but doesn't give any good numbers, except to speak generically of "200,000" apostates.
All these sites report that the Muslims who do so "hide their conversion." This does not lend itself to a thorough investigation of the matter. I would be suspicious of all of these claims.
As for in Canada itself, as I said, I have seen no numbers.
I have been told (as you mention, getting reliable data on the subject is difficult) that the low conversion rate into Islam is a global phenomenon and some writers have proposed that almost all growth Islam has made (since the time when the sword stopped being productive) has been demographic growth. Some have said that, while the birth rates in Muslim nations are still high they are dropping faster than those in the west did due to urbanization and such. I have also been told that Muslim clergy are concerned about the rates of apostasy to Christianity and atheism. Now this all may be over blown but I do suspect that a certain amount of desperation is driving some of the zealotry seen these days.
Hi Jauhara.
My guess too is that most conversions in America are Blacks in prison, a situation I would guess is limited in Canada, driving down the percentage further.
Even if so, it hardly makes me any more comfortable with the rise of Islamic immigration and the encouragement of belligerence of jihadis in our midsts, encouragement due to our endless rolling-over to appease and placate any outrageous demand or action on the part of Muslims. Canadians might be nice, though I have no genuine evidence of it, but they are also no better at asserting values than any other nihilistic nation of moral narcissists.
Conversion is more likely, I hope for myself at least, among atheists who are desperate to turn back the tide of Islam and fascist Leftism, to restore some semblance of Human decency on the sidewalks and cafes of the nation. Living is difficult in a cringing nation of dhimmis and moralistic promoters sentimentalizing and posturing for the sake of grants and publicity.
Jesus? I'm sure looking at Him more favorably than I do the guy in the mirror.
Do you take into consideration the number of converts from Islam to other religions ?? per example, my mother converted to Christianity before marrying my dad
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