Lithuania

ENLithuanian official censuses routinely include a question on religious identity/affiliation. The most recent data (of 2001) reports that 2,860, residents of Lithuania, or 0.1% of the total population, identified themselves as Sunni Muslims (no data on Shi’is available), of whom 1,679 (or 58.7%) were ethnic Tatars, 362 (12.6%) Azerbaijanis, 185 Lithuanians and 74 Russians. Tatars have been living in Lithuania (especially the eastern part of today’s Republic of Lithuania) since the fourteenth century when they started settling in what was the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, primarily as mercenaries and refugees. They were given land by the Lithuanian rulers whom they served. Although over time Lithuanian Tatars lost their mother tongue, they retained their religion and survived as a distinct ethno-cultural yet well integrated group. Most of the other Muslims in Lithuania are descendants of immigrants from the Muslim Central Asian and Caucasian republics who settled in Lithuania during the Soviet period, immigrants of recent years and local converts to Islam. By 2011, the number of nominal Muslims (or people of Muslim background) in Lithuania could have increased to around 8,000, but the number of those practising their religion on a daily basis is unlikely to exceed a tenth of the total. Around two-thirds of Lithuania’s Muslims are concentrated in the capital city Vilnius, the second largest city Kaunas and the districts surrounding these cities. Local media and Muslims tend to rely on and use the official figures but foreign (Muslim) sources sometimes produce unfounded numbers far exceeding the reality (Islam Online in 2004 even gave a figure of 110,000!).