Islam in Luxembourg
Encyclopedia
Muslims in Luxembourg are a super-minority together with: Protestants
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

, Orthodox Christians, and Jews
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

. Since 2008, Islam is legally recognized in the country.

According to the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) report, there are about 4,000 Muslims in Luxembourg. Up until the 1970s, the Muslim population was quite small. In the mid-1970s, the Muslim population counted only 300 people, going up to over 3,000 by the mid-1990s. Since then, the population has doubled due to asylum-seekers from former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

. These asylum-seekers were never expected to stay more than a few years.

Before the 1960s, Muslims were relatively unheard of in Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...

, but as with other surrounding countries, they arrived and gradually the religion spread throughout the country. Today there are currently six mosques in Luxembourg: Mamer (which is also home to the Islamic cultural centre), Niederkorn, Esch-sur-Alzette, Wiltz, Diekirch and Luxembourg City (Avenue de la Gare) and it is estimated that about 10.000 to 12.000 Muslims reside in the Grand-Duchy. This means that Islam is now the second religion in Luxembourg, after Catholicism. However, this ranking is just an estimate, and is not corroborated. Further, it is unsure if all of these Muslims are citizens or not.

External links

  • http://hello.news352.lu/index.php?p=edito&id=6561
  • http://www.islam.lu/ (French and German)
  • Luxembourg from: Anti-Islamic reaction in the EU after the terrorist attacks against the USA [dead link]
  • Third report on Luxembourg by the European Court of Human Rights
    European Court of Human Rights
    The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...

    (§ Muslims) [dead link]
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