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Fact check: What percentage of London's population identifies as Muslim in 2025?
Executive Summary
The available materials do not supply a definitive percentage of Londoners who identified as Muslim in 2025; no source in the provided set reports a direct London share. The strongest concrete datapoints are a UK-wide Muslim population of roughly 4 million (6% of 68 million) and an assertion that London hosts over 1.5 million Muslims, which allows only indirect inferences about London’s share of Muslims or the Muslim share of London’s population but not a precise percentage for London itself [1] [2] [3]. The evidence base in these analyses therefore supports clear statements about counts and national shares, but it does not contain the denominator needed to calculate a robust London percentage for 2025.
1. Where the public claims come from and what they actually say — clarifying the raw counts and national share
Several items in the set report national-level figures: one source states the UK Muslim population is about 4 million, or 6% of a 68 million UK population, while an FOI-style dataset gives a combined count of 1,907,371 females and 1,960,762 males reporting as Muslim in England and Wales [1] [3]. Another summary from a Muslim community organisation emphasizes demographic concentration and deprivation patterns among British Muslims, again at the national or England-and-Wales level rather than for London specifically [4]. These documents provide reliable counts and national shares, but they stop short of breaking those counts down into a published, verified percentage of London’s residents who identify as Muslim in 2025, so any headline percentage for London is not present in the material at hand.
2. The one London-specific datapoint and what it permits — why direct percentages remain out of reach
One source in the collection asserts that London hosts over 1.5 million Muslims, a concrete city-level count that is useful but incomplete because the documents here do not provide a contemporaneous London population denominator to convert that count into a percent [1]. Without the dataset’s explicit London total, or a source in this set giving London’s 2025 population, the correct analytical posture is to treat the 1.5 million figure as a count, not a percent. The figure does allow useful comparisons — for example, it implies that a substantial share of the UK’s Muslim population lives in London — but it does not on its own yield a verified “percentage of London residents who are Muslim” for 2025 within this evidence set.
3. Cross-checks and internal consistency — how the pieces fit and where they diverge
The documents show internal consistency on national Muslim totals (approximately 3.9–4 million across England/Wales and the UK), but they diverge in scope and emphasis: the FOI-style count gives granular binary sex totals for England and Wales [3], the Muslim Council summary highlights socioeconomic distribution and local concentration [4], and a broader report situates London as a large locus of Muslim residents without providing a percent [1]. That pattern — aligned national totals but missing city denominators — explains why analysts can state confidently that London hosts a major share of British Muslims while still being unable to produce a precise London percentage from these sources alone.
4. What the documents omit and why that matters for a precise London percentage
The primary omission across the set is any published, contemporaneous London population denominator aligned to the same reporting frame as the Muslim counts, or a direct London religion breakdown from the same census or FOI release in 2025. Several documents refer to projections or broader demographic tools for England and the UK but do not couple religion and city population totals [5] [6] [7]. That gap matters because converting a count (1.5 million Muslims in London) into a percentage requires a clear, matching population total and consistent geographic definitions; absent that match, any percentage would be an inferential estimate rather than a sourced fact.
5. Bottom line and guidance for a definitive answer — what additional evidence is needed
Based on the material provided, the only defensible statement for 2025 is that the UK had roughly 4 million Muslims and that London contained over 1.5 million of them, indicating a substantial urban concentration [1] [3] [2]. To produce a definitive percentage of London residents who identified as Muslim in 2025, a single dataset is required that reports both the Muslim count and the total London population using the same temporal and geographic definitions; that dataset is not present in this evidence set [5] [6]. Analysts seeking a precise percent should obtain the matched London religion breakdown from the relevant census or an authoritative city-level demographic release and then compute the ratio using those aligned figures.