Some Austrian Christians might be a little surprised by this new survey by Statistics Austria: The fact that 745,600 Muslims already live in Austria and 284,000 of them in Vienna is a huge increase compared to 2001 – after all, there are currently as many Muslims living in Vienna as there are inhabitants of Linz.
The growth of the Islamic religious community in Austria has been documented by statisticians for 50 years: in 1971 there were 22,300 Muslims living in Austria, in 1981 76,900, by 1991 the number had doubled to 158,800, in 2001 there were already 339,000 and now last year 745,600.
Vienna is currently home to by far the largest number of Muslims: 284,900 according to Statistics Austria. This means that 14.8 per cent of the Viennese are members of the Islamic religious community – and only 31.8 per cent are Roman Catholics (34 per cent of the people living in the federal capital have no religious affiliation).
In Vorarlberg, too, the share of Muslims in the total population is high at 12.2 per cent. Strikingly, in the provinces of Tyrol (66.2 per cent), Burgenland (65.5 per cent), Carinthia (63.4 per cent), Styria (63.3 per cent), Upper Austria (62.3 per cent), Vorarlberg (60.7 per cent) and Lower Austria (58.1 per cent), the proportion of Roman Catholics remains high – only in Vienna is this figure far below 50 per cent (31.8 per cent).
In 1951, almost 90 % of the population were still members of the Roman Catholic Church. By 2021, there was a decline of 34 percentage points. While the number of people of the Protestant and Old Catholic faiths also decreased significantly during this period, there was a significant increase among members of the Orthodox churches as well as Islam.
The proportion of people who did not feel they belonged to any faith community in 2021 is highest in Vienna with over a third (34.1%), followed by Styria (22.6%) and Lower Austria (20.5%). Carinthia (16.5 %) and Burgenland (16.8 %), on the other hand, had the lowest proportions of persons with no religious affiliation.
https://exxpress.at/neue-daten-zahl-der-muslime-in-oesterreich-seit-2001-auf-745-600-verdoppelt/
