How many Muslim mayors in uk

1. What the viral claims say — and why they spread

A viral social-media poster asserted that London, Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Oldham and Rochdale “have Muslim mayors,” a list that circulated widely after Sadiq Khan’s re-election and accumulated millions of views, but fact-checking organizations have flagged that framing as misleading because it conflates different mayoral roles and treats religion as fixed public data when it often is not ^{[2] [1] [3]}.

2. The clear, verifiable baseline: Sadiq Khan is Muslim

The one incontrovertible, high-profile example repeatedly cited by Reuters and Full Fact is Sadiq Khan, the directly elected Mayor of London, who is openly Muslim; that single data point is used in many viral posts but does not justify broad inferences about the religion of other mayors around the country ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Civic versus executive mayors — a counting problem

England and Wales have two different kinds of mayors: directly elected executive mayors (few, with citywide political power) and numerous civic or ceremonial mayors appointed by councils, and the religion of civic incumbents is not systematically recorded, which makes any comprehensive tally of “how many Muslim mayors” difficult and often incomplete ^[3].

4. What fact-checkers actually verified about the places named

Investigations by Reuters and Full Fact found that while all of the listed places have had Muslim mayors at some point, many of them do not currently have mayors who identify as Muslim; Reuters contacted mayoral offices in several areas and found none that currently identified as Muslim among the directly elected executives it checked, and Full Fact cautioned that past incumbents do not equal current officeholders ^{[2] [3]}.

5. Conflicting local reporting and partial confirmations

Some local sources and prior Full Fact items note that places such as Oldham and Blackburn “appear to currently have mayors who are Muslim,” underscoring that the picture is mixed and depends on which level of mayoralty is counted and whether a council’s civic mayoralty is temporary or ceremonial ^{[1] [3]}.

6. Why simple numeric claims are unreliable and who benefits

Claims that a large proportion of UK mayors are Muslim (examples include social posts claiming nine or a majority) have been debunked as misleading; such assertions often play into narratives about demographic change and can be amplified by partisan or conspiratorial sites that benefit from sensationalism, while impartial fact-checkers and government records emphasize nuance and the limits of available data ^{[2] [4] [3]}.

7. The limits of the public record and next steps for a definitive count

Because religion is not consistently recorded for elected civic officers and because local offices differ in structure, available public sources — including Wikipedia lists of Muslim politicians and various fact-checks — cannot produce a definitive, single-number answer without a fresh, systematic audit of every mayoralty and explicit self-identification by officeholders ^{[5] [3]}.

8. Bottom line answer

Based on the reporting and fact-checks reviewed, the accurate short answer is: one widely recognized, directly elected mayor in the UK is openly Muslim (Sadiq Khan), several towns and cities have had Muslim mayors historically or in civic roles, but claims that there are nine or a majority of UK mayors who are Muslim are misleading and not supported by Reuters, Full Fact, or other verifiable sources ^{[1] [2] [3]}.