Islam in Europe

Islam is the second-largest religion in Europe after Christianity. Although the majority of Muslim communities in Western Europe formed as a result of recent post-WW2 immigration, there are centuries-old European Muslim communities in the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea, and Volga region. The term "Muslim Europe" is used to refer to the Muslim-majority countries in the Balkans and the Caucasus (Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Turkey) and parts of countries in Central and Eastern Europe with sizable Muslim minorities (Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and some republics of Russia) that constitute large populations of European Muslims, although the majority are secular.

Islam expanded into the Caucasus through the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 7th century and entered Southern Europe after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th–10th centuries; Muslim political entities existed firmly in what is today Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and Malta during the Middle Ages. The Muslim populations in these territories were either converted to Christianity or expelled by the end of the 15th century by the indigenous Christian rulers (see Reconquista). The Ottoman Empire expanded into Southeastern Europe and consolidated its political power by invading and conquering huge portions of the Serbian and Bulgarian empires, and the remaining territories of the region, including the Albanian and Romanian principalities, and the kingdoms of Bosnia, Croatia, and Hungary between the 14th and 16th centuries. Over the centuries, the Ottoman Empire gradually lost its European territories. Islam was particularly influential in the territories of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, and has remained the dominant religion in these countries.

During the Middle Ages, Islam spread in parts of Central and Eastern Europe through the Islamization of several Turkic ethnic groups, such as the Cumans, Kipchaks, Tatars, and Volga Bulgars under the Mongol invasions and conquests in Eurasia, and later under the Golden Horde and its successor khanates, with its various Muslim populations collectively referred to as "Turks" or "Tatars". These groups had a strong presence in present-day European Russia, Hungary, and Ukraine during the High Medieval Period.