Muslim Life in Germany - Deutsche Islam Konferenz

80 How many Muslims live in Germany?
which indicates that between 3,8 and 4,3 million Muslims are
living in Germany, exceeds previous assumptions. In Bundestag
document 16/5033 published in 2007, an estimate based on the
AZR and the naturalisation statistics from 2006 put the figure at
just under 3.4 million. This discrepancy of between 400,000 and
700,000 persons can be attributed to the fact that the estimate
only took into account 20 predominantly Muslim countries, or
just under half of the countries which have been included in the
“Muslim Life in Germany” project. 33
Extrapolations of the number of Muslims in Germany are
usually based on the number of individuals living in Germany
who originate from predominantly Muslim countries. This
procedure was also used for the extrapolation cited above. One
problem with this procedure lies in the fact that it is not possible
to determine a person’s religious affiliation solely on the basis
of their nationality for those who originate from religiously heterogeneous
countries such as Lebanon. Estimates of this type
usually allow for this fact by taking the statistics for the share of
Muslims in the corresponding country of origin and applying
the values found there to the corresponding group of origin in
Germany. Data sources for this include the CIA World Factbook
and Philip’s Geographical Digest (Brown 2000: 97). However,
this procedure ignores the fact that it often ethnic and religious
minorities who emigrate in the greatest numbers, meaning
that the religious composition of the country of origin is not
necessarily the same as the religious composition of an immi-
33 The following countries were not taken into account: Southeast Europe (with
the exception of Bosnia-Herzegovina), the Central Asia/CIS region, India, Israel
and countries from the other parts of Africa. According to the extrapolations for
the Muslim Life in Germany study, between 621,000 and 808,000 of the Muslims
living in Germany come from these countries (although this figure includes
Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina).