Largest study in a generation aims to map the experiences of Britain’s Muslim converts

LONDON (MNTV) — The Ayaan Institute has launched what researchers describe as the first large-scale study of Muslim converts in Britain in over a decade, seeking to move beyond the security-focused framing that has dominated previous research and build an evidence-based picture of a community that may be three times larger than the most commonly cited estimates suggest.

The project, led by researcher Yahya Birt and reported by Hyphen, combines an opt-in online survey targeting up to 1,600 converts with a parallel study of roughly 100 mosques and organisations that provide support to new Muslims. 

Launched in April, the research aims to capture both individual experiences — from the initial journey into Islam to long-term engagement or disengagement — and the institutional infrastructure that exists, or fails to exist, around them.

A community larger than assumed

The most widely referenced figure for the number of Muslim converts in Britain comes from a 2010 Faith Matters report that estimated approximately 60,000, based on extrapolations from the 2001 Scottish census. 

But subsequent censuses did not include questions that would capture changes of religion, leaving the data frozen. 

Birt’s own estimates, drawing on the same baseline datasets but adjusting for demographic trends over two decades, suggest the actual number could be between 150,000 and 200,000 — a significant population that remains largely invisible in both public discourse and community planning.

Beyond the security lens

Birt told Hyphen that much of the existing research on Muslim converts had been shaped by the post-September 11 preoccupation with extremism and radicalisation, producing a body of work that was narrow in its questions and often treated conversion itself as a potential risk factor rather than a lived experience.

The new study is designed to ask a fundamentally different set of questions: what draws people to Islam, what their experiences are within Muslim communities, where the support works well, and where it falls short. 

Birt said there was a growing appetite within the community for evidence-based understanding rather than reliance on anecdote, and that meaningful reform required an honest accounting of both strengths and failures.

“We want to ask the tough questions,” he told Hyphen. “Not just what’s working well, but where there are gaps or shortcomings in how we support people.”

Patchy support, inappropriate materials

The picture Birt describes is one of significant inconsistency. In some mosques and communities, converts find structured mentoring, social networks, and teaching that meets them where they are as adult learners. In others, they are essentially left to navigate their new faith alone, dependent on chance encounters or personal connections.

He identified a particular problem with educational materials, many of which were originally written for children attending madrasas and are poorly suited to adults who have made a conscious decision to enter the faith. 

While the quality of resources has improved over the years, he said, the gaps remain substantial.

Some converts find themselves pulled between competing groups eager to claim them, while others are quietly marginalised — welcomed initially but without any sustained system of support. 

For a significant number, Birt said, the result is isolation and eventual disengagement from the community, or in some cases departure from the faith entirely.

The study is designed to reach those people too, though Birt acknowledged the difficulty. Converts who have disengaged from Muslim communities or left Islam altogether are unlikely to be reached through mosque networks. 

For those cases, the research team plans to conduct in-depth interviews alongside the broader survey.

A call for institutional reform

The findings are expected to be published later this year, with the explicit aim of informing the work of mosques, charities, and grassroots organisations. Birt framed the project not as an academic exercise but as a tool for self-examination within British Muslim institutions.

“We need better community leadership and more strategic thinking,” he told Hyphen. “The purpose of the report is to shine a light on where we fall short and how we can do better.”

For a community that may number in the hundreds of thousands and that has been simultaneously fetishised as a security concern and overlooked as a pastoral responsibility, the study represents an attempt to start from a different place — one that treats converts not as a problem to be managed but as a population whose experiences have something important to say about the health and openness of British Muslim life as a whole.