Germany sees rise in revert to Islam

14 Dec, 2005

More than 1,000 people reverted to Islam in Germany this year, the highest figure on record, and a majority were women who were not married to a Muslim, according to a report on Tuesday.
"This is a considerable rise," Salim Abdullah, the director of the Central Institute of Islamic Archives in Germany, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
The Institute said its statistics showed that 14,352 of the 3.2 million Muslims in Germany are of German descent.
More than 60 percent of the reverts to Muslim are women and most of them are "university-educated and affluent", Abdullah said.
Only a small percentage reverted to Islam as a result of marrying a Muslim.
The institute collates information supplied by local Muslim groups, based on applications for visas for pilgrimages to Makkah.

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