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In July 2019, Imam Ibrahim Noonan of Galway, Ireland received a phone call threatening him. The man on the other line of the call spoke about his hatred toward the increased number of Muslims in Ireland. Later that month, his mosque was vandalized, including the breaking of windows, his office, and surveillance cameras.

Muslim’s integration into European lives has progressed throughout the 2010s decade, but it is often halted by Muslim communities often exemplifying negative stereotypes caused by many Muslim ethnic traditions that make little sense to Europeans.

According to the Pew Research Center’s findings from a 2019 study suggests that the large majority of Europeans are willing to accept Muslims as their neighbors and part of their community. However, many individuals raise concern as to Islam’s ability to integrate smoothly into the existing European culture and values. The Netherlands had the highest percentage of individuals accepting of Muslims at 96% of the surveyed population.

As of 2016, France and Germany are the two EU nations to have the highest Muslim populations at 8.8% and 6.1% respectively. Averaged across all European states, 4.9% of the population was Muslim in 2016. Projections by the Pew Research Center suggest that at a medium immigration and reproduction rate, the Muslim population will hover around 11.2% by 2050, while more conservative measurements suggest 7.4% by 2050.

In 2010, France enacted a new law prohibiting the covering of one’s face in public. Because of this law, Muslim women are unable to wear a burqa in public, resulting in a dilemma between following their religion or the law.

In 2019, an anti-Muslim provocateur in caused uproar in Copenhagen, Denmark by publicly desecrating the Quran. Rasmus Paludan, the individual who purposely let the Quran touch the ground after tossing it into the air and member of a far-right party, spent time throughout the year actively protesting Muslim’s and Immigrants. The resulting riots of Paludan’s acts have been estimated to cost around $900,000 worth of damage.

Research conducted by Richard McAlexander from The Washington Post suggests that immigrants do not cause an increase in terrorism in Western European nations, but instead, native citizens with strong anti-immigration agenda cause terrorism due to hostility toward immigrants. The correlation between increased terrorism and increased number of individuals migrating into the country is stronger when the immigrants are Muslim.

The UN Refugee Agency found that since 2014 at least 18,900 Muslim individuals died while attempting to cross Mediterranean Sea in hopes of finding refuge in Europe. On top of this, the agency found that more Muslim migrants have died in refugee camps and on land routes than by Libyan smugglers. The blame of which is often placed on European government’s protective laws regarding immigration.

In 2009, immigration was ranked as the fifth most important problem facing the Netherlands, only to be preceded by economic condition, unemployment, national way of life, and the effects of the financial crisis.

One-third of Frances five million Muslims are under the age of 20, suggesting the Millennial and Generation Z groups will see a large growth of the Muslim Population in coming years in Europe.