Islam in Poland - Changes in Recent Years

Changes in Recent Years

Apart from the traditional Tatar communities, since the 1970s Poland has also been home to a small but growing immigrant Muslim community.

In the 1970s and 1980s Poland attracted a number of students from many socialist-aligned Arabic-speaking states of the Middle East and Africa. Many of them decided to stay in Poland. In the late 1980s this community became more active and better organized. They have built mosques and praying houses in Warsaw, Białystok, Gdańsk (built by the Tatar community), Wrocław, Lublin and Poznań. There are also praying rooms in Bydgoszcz, Kraków, Łódź, Olsztyn, Katowice and Opole.

Since the overthrow of Communism in 1989, other Muslim immigrants have come to Poland. A relatively prominent group are Turks and Muslims from the former Yugoslavia. There are also smaller groups of immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and from other countries, as well as a small refugee community coming from Chechnya.

The exact number of Muslims living is Poland remains unknown as the last all-national census held by the Central Statistical Office in 2002 did not ask for religion.

There are two contemporary Polish Muslim religious leaders: Tomasz Miśkiewicz and Jakub Szynkiewicz.