In 2019, there were estimated to be approximately **** million Muslims living in London, making it the region of England and Wales with the highest Muslim population. Large Muslim populations also live in other English regions, such as the West Midlands, the North West, and Yorkshire.

In 2016, it was estimated that Birmingham had the largest Muslim population of any local authority in England and Wales at approximately 280 thousand people. Newham and Tower Hamlets, both boroughs of London, had the second and third-largest Muslim populations at 135 and 128 thousand respectively.

This statistic displays the projected Muslim population proportions in selected European countries in 2050, by scenario. In 2010 the proportion of Muslims in the population of Germany was *** percent, compared with *** percent in the UK and *** percent in France. Depending on the different migration scenarios estimated here, Germany's share of Muslims in the population could rise up to **** percent of it's population by 2050, higher than both the UK and France, with projected Muslim populations of **** and ** percent respectively.

Predominantly Muslim urban centres in Asia – such as Aleppo, Herat, Kabul and Bukhara – have historically been home to sizeable communities of ethno-religious minorities, including Jews, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus. Yet it is widely accepted that conflict and large-scale migrations over the past century, of minorities and Muslims, has led to 'decosmopolitisation'. Scholarship on the migrant communities that identify with these cities tends to reinforce this perception of decosmopolitisation.

The hypothesis of this research project is that interreligious relations actually persist, but often unrecognised, in older and newer diasporic contexts, and in appeals to a shared urban heritage. This comparative research programme analyses the ways in which both everyday living and projects of the imagination invoke urban imaginaries, and the extent to which these transcend (or reinforce) religious, sectarian, national and ethnic boundaries. Its empirical focus is on the experiences of ethno-religious minorities and the extent to which legacies of cosmopolitan urban life remain a vital aspect of the cities' Muslim populations.

This data collection relates to the Aleppo strand of the project. Questionnaires in Arabic were distributed electronically to Muslim residents and former residents of popular / working-class (sha‘bi) quarters of Aleppo through an Arab Muslim former resident of the Hilluk district of Aleppo who had migrated to Gaziantep during the Syrian civil war (2012-). Life history interviews were also conducted with prominent Aleppine Armenian members of the Armenian community in Kuwait: the priest of the Armenian church in Aleppo, and two leading Syrian Armenian merchants who run successful businesses in Kuwait and play a prominent role in the Armenian community there.

Afterlives will research the persistence or avoidance of interreligious relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and the modes by which these elicit or invoke shared urban sensibilities. We will conduct ethnographic fieldwork amongst migrant minority and Muslim communities in London, New York, Vienna, Jerusalem, Istanbul and Vienna and in 3 of the 4 selected cities. The project will document the vitality of legacies of cosmopolitan urban living and the role in these of diasporic communities, and analyse in Muslim Asia how projects of heritage reproduce social boundaries (e.g. between diasporic and settled communities, and urban and non-urban/ not fully urban citizens). Doing so will develop a new and different approach to interreligious relationships that illuminates the importance of shared attachment to urban centres, and enables greater sensitivity in future interventions in the field of tangible and intangible heritage preservation and restoration. First, the project will generate empirical data on the temporal and geographic dispersal of the cities under-study. We will map flows of people through space and time by conducting textual, archival and visual research in countries of origin and sites of migration. Second, Afterlives will investigate how projects of imagination relating to historic centres are produced and sustained, and explore how they point to diversity in Muslim Asia's cultural imaginaries. To do so we will investigate emergent configurations of culture, history, identity and geography in Muslim Asia by exploring the significance of relationships and exchanges between Muslim and ethno-religious minorities to imagination in the region today. We will: interview key actors in the production of imaginaries, focusing especially on cultural elites (intellectuals, musicians, artists, poets, politicians and activists); record the genres (visual, literary, musical, culinary) where such imaginations are generated and sustained and explore ethnographically the sites (digital, political, scholarly, and social) in which they are performed and consumed; explore the implications of architectural reconstruction on such imaginaries by visiting key sites, and interview relevant heritage specialists, local and national policy-makers, pilgrims/tourists, and custodians; trace the use in projects of imagination of knowledge about tangible and intangible heritage preservation. Third, given declining levels of religious diversity in urban centres, it is oft assumed that Silk Road-era commercial relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim merchants are no longer of relevance. Yet our recent fieldwork suggests otherwise: Muslim and Sikh traders from Afghanistan interacted from the 1980s onwards in London and Moscow, for example. To explore such interreligious commercial relationships we will carry out in-depth ethnographic work with diasporic merchants in key trading sites - markets, shops and warehouses - and explore documentary and archival material in the form of autobiographies of merchants and company records. Fourth, to research the 'doing' of connectivity, and the role played by tacit modes of acting across lines of difference...

This statistic shows the estimated number of Muslims living in different European countries as of 2016. Approximately **** million Muslims were estimated to live in France, the most of any country listed. Germany and the United Kingdom also have large muslim populations with **** million and **** million respectively.

Transnational practices in local settings: Experiences of local citizenship among Bangladesh-origin Muslims in London and Birmingham is a project funded by the ESRC, investigating the relationship between local and transnational citizenship experiences among Bangladesh-origin Muslims in the diaspora in London (Tower Hamlets and Luton) and Birmingham. The access to education, employment, housing, healthcare and local political processes was examined. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Bengali families in the form of same-sex parent/child dyads in Tower Hamlets, Luton and Birmingham. The use of same-sex parent-child dyads will help draw out generational dimensions and focus the issues of continuity and change over time. oral history interviews and civil society interviews were conducted in each location, producing a total of interviews, complemented by ethnographic observation with the Bangladeshi community in both field sites. NVivo software was used for data analysis.

'Transnational citizenship' (Baubock, 1994; Fox, 2005) has been conceptualised to reflect the processes through which political identity transcends the nation-state (Basch et al, 1994). However, the degree to which political identities that cross borders may be informed by political identities within borders remains a matter of considerable academic debate. It has been argued, for example, that transnational ties represent an impediment to the formation of national and local identifications; a danger to citizenship and integration in countries of settlement (Snel et al, 2006). Others argue that the reverse may also be true. The concept of 'political opportunity structure' has come to suggest that transnational practices take place in local settings; shaped by the particular opportunities and constraints present in different localities (Guarnizo and Smith, 1998; Mahler, 1998). This deviates from the majority of the literature on Muslim transnational relations in particular, in which the focus is very often on the characteristics of the population, or the characteristics of Islamic culture, in a way that ignores "the role of social and political circumstances in shaping how people make sense of the world and then act upon it" (Kundnani, 2014, p.10). This project considers the relationship between the local and transnational citizenship experiences of Bangladesh-origin Muslims in London and Birmingham. It investigates local experiences of citizenship in relation to a) different histories of settlement, b) different population profiles in terms of ethnic concentration, age, gender, socio-economic background, length of residence and naturalization status, and c) the different social and political environments of the two cities. The project will examine how these local political identities influence processes of transnational engagement, and consider how transnational identities and relationships in turn inform local political subjectivity. It will draw on the insights of 'political opportunity theory' but depart from it in two key respects. First, previous work has tended to construct migrant populations as homogenous groups and this project will devote greater attention to considering how issues play out differently according to gender, generation and class. Second, it will move beyond characterisations of citizenship based on 'formal status' to consider more 'substantive' dimensions of socio-political engagement - the social, cultural, political, or symbolic 'acts' that legal status may or may not make possible (Isin and Nielsen, 2008). This includes examination of access to education, employment, housing, healthcare and local political processes. In each location, 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews will be conducted with 15 Bengali families in the form of same-sex parent/child dyads. The use of same-sex parent-child dyads will help draw out generational dimensions and focus the issues of continuity and change over time. In addition, 5 oral history interviews and 5 civil society interviews will be conducted in each location, producing a total of 80 interviews, complemented by ethnographic observation with the Bangladeshi community in both field sites. In the context of the on-going 'War on Terror', and an increasing political and media focus on a security threat that is 'home grown', the transnational practices of British Muslims have generated particular concern. This has fed into a range of recent policy proposals with respect to the treatment of British subjects who engage in transnational activities the Government does not support, and brings the constitutionally protected activities of a large number of people under increasing surveillance (Kundnani, 2014). In popular debate and the practice of public policy, therefore, transnational ties may affect local experiences of citizenship, but more research is needed to understand how transnational activity is situated in local social, cultural and...

In the 3 years to March 2021, white British families were the most likely to receive a type of state support.

In 1800, the population of the area of modern-day Bangladesh was estimated to be just over 19 million, a figure which would rise steadily throughout the 19th century, reaching over 26 million by 1900. At the time, Bangladesh was the eastern part of the Bengal region in the British Raj, and had the most-concentrated Muslim population in the subcontinent's east. At the turn of the 20th century, the British colonial administration believed that east Bengal was economically lagging behind the west, and Bengal was partitioned in 1905 as a means of improving the region's development. East Bengal then became the only Muslim-majority state in the eastern Raj, which led to socioeconomic tensions between the Hindu upper classes and the general population. Bengal Famine During the Second World War, over 2.5 million men from across the British Raj enlisted in the British Army and their involvement was fundamental to the war effort. The war, however, had devastating consequences for the Bengal region, as the famine of 1943-1944 resulted in the deaths of up to three million people (with over two thirds thought to have been in the east) due to starvation and malnutrition-related disease. As the population boomed in the 1930s, East Bengal's mismanaged and underdeveloped agricultural sector could not sustain this growth; by 1942, food shortages spread across the region, millions began migrating in search of food and work, and colonial mismanagement exacerbated this further. On the brink of famine in early-1943, authorities in India called for aid and permission to redirect their own resources from the war effort to combat the famine, however these were mostly rejected by authorities in London. While the exact extent of each of these factors on causing the famine remains a topic of debate, the general consensus is that the British War Cabinet's refusal to send food or aid was the most decisive. Food shortages did not dissipate until late 1943, however famine deaths persisted for another year. Partition to independence Following the war, the movement for Indian independence reached its final stages as the process of British decolonization began. Unrest between the Raj's Muslim and Hindu populations led to the creation of two separate states in1947; the Muslim-majority regions became East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan), separated by the Hindu-majority India. Although East Pakistan's population was larger, power lay with the military in the west, and authorities grew increasingly suppressive and neglectful of the eastern province in the following years. This reached a tipping point when authorities failed to respond adequately to the Bhola cyclone in 1970, which claimed over half a million lives in the Bengal region, and again when they failed to respect the results of the 1970 election, in which the Bengal party Awami League won the majority of seats. Bangladeshi independence was claimed the following March, leading to a brutal war between East and West Pakistan that claimed between 1.5 and three million deaths in just nine months. The war also saw over half of the country displaced, widespread atrocities, and the systematic rape of hundreds of thousands of women. As the war spilled over into India, their forces joined on the side of Bangladesh, and Pakistan was defeated two weeks later. An additional famine in 1974 claimed the lives of several hundred thousand people, meaning that the early 1970s was one of the most devastating periods in the country's history. Independent Bangladesh In the first decades of independence, Bangladesh's political hierarchy was particularly unstable and two of its presidents were assassinated in military coups. Since transitioning to parliamentary democracy in the 1990s, things have become comparatively stable, although political turmoil, violence, and corruption are persistent challenges. As Bangladesh continues to modernize and industrialize, living standards have increased and individual wealth has risen. Service industries have emerged to facilitate the demands of Bangladesh's developing economy, while manufacturing industries, particularly textiles, remain strong. Declining fertility rates have seen natural population growth fall in recent years, although the influx of Myanmar's Rohingya population due to the displacement crisis has seen upwards of one million refugees arrive in the country since 2017. In 2020, it is estimated that Bangladesh has a population of approximately 165 million people.

Approximately ****** prisoners in England and Wales identified as being Christian in 2024, the most of any religious faith among prisoners. A further ****** identified as having no religion, while ****** identified as Muslims.

Since 1970, the worst terrorist attack in the United Kingdom was the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988 above Lockerbie, Scotland, which caused 270 fatalities. Of the ten attacks worst terrorist attacks in the UK, seven were related to the troubles in Northern Ireland, while two were related to Islamic extremism. The London 7/7 bombings in 2005, which caused the deaths of 56 people, and the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017, which claimed the lives of 23 people. Are terrorist attacks in the UK on the rise? When compared with earlier decades, the number of terrorist attacks in the UK has declined considerably. Throughout the 1970s, there were approximately 1,644 terrorist attacks, 1,315 in the 1980s, and 1,214 in the 1990s, compared with just 325 in the 2000s, and 925 in the 2010s. During this period, the year with the highest number of attacks was 1972 when there were 292. Although the period between 2013 and 2018 saw a high volume of terrorist attacks, this has started to decline in more recent years. In 2021, for example there were 40 terrorist attacks, the fewest since 2009. A global threat In 2023, 21,596 people lost their lives due to terrorism, with Syria suffering the highest number of attacks at 1,405. The UK was not alone in seeing the intensity of terror attacks increase in the mid-2010s, either. The Paris Attacks of November 2015 caused 130 fatalities, while the Nice attacks in 2016 led to 86 deaths, some of the worst terrorist incidents to have ever taken place in Europe. Due to these attacks, the number of deaths caused by terrorism was significantly higher in 2015 and 2016 than in other years, at 152, and 142 respectively.

In 2021 there were 40 terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom compared with 90 in 2020. During the provided time period, the year with the most terrorist attacks was 1972 when there were 292.