Tuomas Martikainen1
1 Muslim Populations
The annexation of Finland by imperial Russia in 1808 gradually led to the permanent settlement of Muslims on its territory. From at least the 1830s there were Muslim soldiers, including Kazakhs and Tatars, among the Russian military in several garrisons stationed on the territory of today’s Finland. They practised their religion and were served by garrison imams. Since the 1870s, Tatar Muslims from the Russian Nizhni Novgorod region started to arrive, and they eventually became the first permanently settled Nordic Muslim community. After Finnish independence (1917), Muslims were granted citizenship (1920 onwards) and they were able to organise officially as a religious community when the Freedom of Religion Act came into force in January 1923. By the mid-1920s, the main wave of migra- tion ended following the closure of the Soviet borders.2 Muslim migra- tion remained low, but their numbers gradually grew due to marriage, work, study and international tourism in the post-World War II period. The Muslim population started to grow rapidly at the turn of the 1990s as the number of UNHCR quota refugees and asylum seekers from Muslim countries grew, alongside other forms of migration. Currently, the larg- est groups are Arabs (mainly from Iraq), Somalis, Kurds, Turks, Kosovo Albanians, Persians and Bosnians. The majority of Muslims in Finland are Sunni and about a tenth is Shi’i.3 By 2011, an estimated 60,000–65,000 Mus- lims were living in Finland, that is, just above 1% of the total population of
1 Tuomas Martikainen is a professor in ethnic relations in the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki. He has researched and published widely on contemporary religious and ethnic diversity in Finland and is the author of Religion, Migration, Settle- ment: Reflections on Post-1990 Immigration to Finland (Leiden: Brill, 2013). The chapter has been written in association with the Post-Secular Culture and a Changing Religious Land- scape in Finland Project (Åbo Akademi University). 2 Leitzinger, Antero, Suomen tataarit: Vuosina 1868–1944 muodostuneen muslimiyhteisön menestystarina (Finland’s Tatars: The Success Story of the Muslim Community Formed during 1868–1944) (Helsinki: East-West Books Helsinki, 2006). 3 Martikainen, Tuomas, “Finland”, in Göran Larsson (ed.), Islam in the Nordic and Baltic Countries (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 76–89. 238 tuomas martikainen
5.4 million.4 The Muslim average age is very young and about half are under the age of twenty. The Muslim population broadly consists of four parts. (1) The majority (about 50,000) of Finnish Muslims are first genera- tion migrants.5 (2) The second generation and children of mixed marriages are increasing in number and currently number 10,000–15,000. This figure is based on parents’ country of birth data with either a fifth (migrant- migrant parents) or half (migrant-native parents) deducted from the number (data from Statistics Finland).6 (3) Isra Lehtinen, a long-standing Finnish Muslim activist, estimates the number of converts to be around 1,500.7 (4) The two Tatar congregations have 649 members, according to official membership statistics provided by the Population Register Centre. There are no representative surveys regarding identification as a Muslim, nor are the majority of Muslims registered in official Muslim communi- ties. Little is known about the religious activity and participation levels of Finnish Muslims, but it has been estimated that around one third are in contact with the mosque communities. The majority of Finnish Muslims live in the capital (Helsinki) region and other large cities, most notably in Turku and Tampere. The geographical distribution between different ethnic groups is, however, very different.
2 Islam and the State
Freedom of religion was added to the Finnish Constitution in 1919 (revised 1999). The Freedom of Religion Act (1922, revised 2003) provides more
4 In Finland, people are registered according to their official membership of state- recognised religious organisations (rekisteröity uskonnollinen yhdyskunta). Such Muslim organisations had 9,393 registered members in 2010. These figures significantly under-report religious affiliation among all migrant groups, including Muslims, and there is no survey or census data (the last census was conducted in 1985) that provides accurate information on the religious affiliation, adherence or identity of immigrants. As a result, numbers of Muslims need to be estimated by using less reliable and direct means. As the majority of Muslims in Finland are first generation migrants, country of birth statistics are the best available starting point. Comprehensive statistical data on the second generation are only emerging. See Martikainen, Tuomas, “Maahanmuuttajien uskonnollisen taustan tilastol- linen arvioiminen Suomessa” (The Making of Statistical Estimates of Immigrants’ Religious Background in Finland), Teologinen Aikakauskirja, vol. 116, no. 3 (2011), pp. 40–54. 5 The basis of calculation of the estimate is presented in detail in Martikainen, “Maahanmuuttajien uskonnollisen taustan tilastollinen arvioiminen Suomessa”, pp. 40–54. For this chapter, the calculations were redone to cover the time until 2011. 6 These reductions are somewhat arbitrary (see, n. 4) but nevertheless provide a clear standard that can be corrected when more reliable data becomes available. 7 Isra Lehtinen, personal communication, 19 January 2012.