Rise of far-right in France after Paris Attacks

[muriel_volestrangler]

110. No, we can be very confident that 15% is wrong - it's only among the religious

That's what your graph says - it lists the people who call themselves Christian, Muslim etc., but no 'no religion' group. Add up the numbers, and you get to far below the French population of 18 to 50 (14.375 million, out of a total population of 64.4 million in 2008; 32 years should be about 40% of a total population). And, as I said, the figures I showed you come from the Insee/INED "trajectoire et origine" report.

If we want to use that report to guess a total number, then: your picture has 2.1 million Muslims between 18 and 50 - 33 year groups. Since they are a younger population, say the under 18s are another 2 million (generous, I'd say). and another 1.4 million above 50. That would be 5.5 million, which is 8.5% of the population.

And indeed, we find one of the authors said:

Patrick Simon, sociologist, researcher at INED, and one of the authors of the study says that even adding those under 18 or over 50, you won't reach 5 million.

Patrick Simon explained that "declared Muslims" are people who declare themselves Muslims, whatever their religion or practices. It is not an estimate based on country of origin or their parents. People who come from majority-Islam countries or born to parents from such countries are usually automatically considered Muslims, and this might partially explain the discrepancy. On the other hand, says Simon, unlike ethnic-based assumption, their 2.1 million figures include French converts to Islam.

According to the INED and INSEE study, Catholicism if the main religion in France with 11.5 million believers aged 18-50 (43% of the population), Islam is the leading minority religion with 2.1 million believers, followed by Protestantism (500,000), Buddhism (150,000) and Jews (125,000) (ed: the Jewish community says they have 500,000).

http://en.islamtoday.net/artshow-229-3977.htm

Since we're a few years on, perhaps 5 million is now possible. But it looks unlikely it's above 8%.