ABSTRACT
In 2008 there were almost one million people with an Islamic background in the Netherlands, comprising about 6 per cent of the total population. Turkish Muslims constitute the largest group (372,000), followed by Moroccans (335,000), Surinamese Muslims (45,000), Pakistanis (50,000), Iraqis (45,000), Afghans (38,000) and Iranians (30,000). The remaining Muslims come from Somalia and other African countries, with a relatively small number from Indonesia – about 10,000 according to estimations – and a small proportion from other East Asian countries. There are about 12,000 converts to Islam in the Netherlands. Nominally, Islam constitutes the second largest religious denomination in the country (CBS 2008). Unlike countries such as France and the UK, the overwhelming majority of Muslim migrants come from countries that had no colonial relations with the Netherlands. From the early 1960s onwards, labour migrants from Turkey and Morocco were hired by industries in the Netherlands. Most of them had a rural background and found work in low-wage and unskilled sections of the labour market, which were in the process of fundamental restructuring after World War II.1 The idea was that most of these temporal ‘guest workers’, as they were called, would return to their home countries once the restructuring process was completed.
