ABSTRACT
International migratory movements have shaped European populations in many ways during recent decades and have led to increasing ethnic and religious diversity across the continent (Castles and Miller 2003). Finland is no exception to this general development. However, the history, timing and composition of the development has many specifically national features that – within a European context – make Finland more similar to countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal than to the traditional, post-war immigration societies such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom. In the post-Second World War period, Finland was a country of emigration until the 1980s, thereafter it gradually turned into a net-immigration country. The main changes and largest growth took place after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and, in fact, people from the territories of the former Soviet Union constituted 34 per cent of all foreign born in 2006. Since the 1990s, the number of immigrants has shown a constant, rapid rise (Forsander 2002; Statistics Finland 2006). Scholarship has followed developments in the immigrant and Muslim population in Finland with increasing interest since the late 1990s. Today, we are familiar with the elementary characteristics of the Muslim population in Finland, but a deeper and more nuanced knowledge of many particular aspects, such as levels of religiosity, religious leadership, intra-community relations and religious orientation of mosque communities is still required.1 Furthermore, as the Muslim community is still expanding and taking constantly new initiatives, the situation is in an ongoing flux. In 2006, there were about 40,000 Muslims in Finland, accounting for 0.8 per cent of the total population.2
