# A numbered list of statistics circulating on social media shows that Muslims have taken over Britain's cities, courts and welfare system

**Verdict: Contradicted.** This is an anti-Muslim artifact and it is worth saying so plainly rather than treating it as a neutral set of figures that happens to be inaccurate. It presents a British Muslim population as an occupying force through a list of numbers, and the numbers do not hold up. Full Fact has checked the same list in December 2022, February 2025 and September 2026, and the claims arrive verbatim identical each time. What makes it durable is that it is mostly not invented. Several figures are real numbers with the qualifications stripped off, applied to the wrong denominator, or true of the past and presented as true now. That survives a casual check, which is what a casual check is for.

Category: Hoaxes & Pop Culture · Era: 2010s-2020s · First circulated: Circulating on Facebook and other platforms in essentially its current form since at least 2022, and by Full Fact's account the underlying claims have been going round for years longer than that · Believed by: Shared widely on UK Facebook and increasingly on X, typically as a screenshot or graphic with no author and no sources attached, which is part of how it travels
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/uk-muslim-statistics-sheet

## Summary
It arrives as a tidy numbered list. So many mosques, so many sharia courts, this many cities with Muslim mayors, this percentage of Muslim women not working. No author, no sources, just figures, and figures look like the opposite of a rumour. The list is an anti-Muslim smear and this page calls it that, but the interesting thing about it is not that it lies. It mostly does not, exactly. Take the mosque count: the sheet says over 3,000, and there really is a database of British mosques listing 3,354 locations, a total its own compilers say includes around 400 defunct addresses, 50 multi-faith spaces and 75 entries they are unsure about. The same organisation puts the actual figure near 1,700. That is the pattern across the list. Real numbers with the caveats sanded off, real facts about the past written in the present tense, real proportions calculated against a population that is millions of people too small. Full Fact has taken it apart in 2022, in 2025 and again in September 2026, and it comes back each time with the digits unchanged.

## The claim
That a list of statistics circulating on social media accurately describes the size and influence of the Muslim population in Britain, showing large numbers of mosques and sharia courts, Muslim mayors installed across major cities, and a majority of Muslims living on state support rather than working.

## Origin and timeline
- 2022-12-21: Full Fact publishes a check of a graphic circulating on social media, finding that the 'facts' in it are mostly wrong. The claims it examines are the ones still circulating today: the nine cities said to have Muslim mayors, over 3,000 mosques, 130 sharia courts and more than 50 sharia councils.
- 2018: The Home Office, in a review, estimates there are between 30 and 85 sharia councils in England and Wales, and notes there is no official count. This remains the standard figure the list's sharia numbers are measured against.
- 2018: The government estimates around 1,500 mosques and prayer halls in England. In 2020 the Muslim Council of Britain gives a figure of about 1,200 mosques in Britain. Neither is close to the number the list uses.
- 2021-03: The census is taken. It will later record 3.8 million people identifying as Muslim in England, against an England population of around 57.7 million, and provide the employment figures the list's welfare claims are checked against.
- 2025-02-25: Full Fact checks the list again after it is reshared, and publishes the specific corrections: of the nine cities named, London, Rochdale, Oldham and Luton are known to have Muslim mayors at that point, with no evidence for Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield or Oxford. On employment, 37% of Muslim adult women were in work in 2021, and 51.4% of all Muslims of working age.
- 2026-02: Muslims in Britain, which maintains a database of mosques, states there are 1,850 mosques, prayer rooms and shared spaces such as hired halls and chaplaincies across the UK and Ireland, and about 1,700 actual mosques. Its list of 3,354 'locations' includes roughly 400 defunct addresses, 50 multi-faith venues and 75 entries it describes as very uncertain.
- 2026-09-09: Full Fact checks the same list for at least the third time, noting it has explained the problems several times before. The claims are unchanged from the versions checked in 2022 and 2025.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The mayors of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Oldham and Rochdale are all Muslim.
  Evidence: The religion of a mayor is not a matter of public record, so the list is asserting something nobody systematically tracks. Full Fact's February 2025 check found four of the nine, London, Rochdale, Oldham and Luton, then had Muslim mayors, with no evidence for the other five. Its 2026 check adds concrete counter-examples: the mayor of Oldham at that point, Pam Byrne, appears to have been a church warden, and the mayor of Oxford has been described as a regular attender at church functions. Every one of these places has had a Muslim mayor at some time, which is how a list that is false in the present tense can be assembled entirely from things that were once true.
- Claim: There are over 3,000 mosques in Britain.
  Evidence: The Office for National Statistics does not count places of worship, so there is no official figure. The number in the list closely tracks something real, though: Muslims in Britain, which maintains the main database, lists 3,354 'locations'. That organisation says the total includes about 400 defunct addresses, 50 multi-faith spaces and 75 entries it is very unsure about, and puts the number of actual mosques at about 1,700. The government's 2018 estimate was 1,500 mosques and prayer halls in England; the Muslim Council of Britain said about 1,200 in 2020. The list has taken a database's raw row count and dropped the database's own warnings about it.
- Claim: There are 130 Muslim sharia courts and over 50 sharia councils in Britain.
  Evidence: There are no sharia courts in Britain. Sharia councils, which are sometimes loosely called courts, have no legal jurisdiction and cannot override English law. On numbers, the Home Office estimated in 2018 that there were between 30 and 85 councils in England and Wales, and said there is no official count. The list's figures sit well above the top of that range and split a single thing into two categories to be counted twice.
- Claim: 78% of Muslim women and 63% of Muslim men do not work and live on benefits and free housing.
  Evidence: Full Fact's 2026 check gives 49% of adult Muslims in employment according to the 2021 census, and 27% of Muslim households in England and Wales living in social housing. Its 2025 check gives 37% of Muslim adult women in work and 51.4% of all Muslims of working age. Not working is also not the same as claiming benefits: the category includes students, carers, retired people and the long-term sick, and Full Fact notes there is no data on how many benefit claimants are Muslim, because religion is not recorded.
- Claim: There are 4 million Muslims out of a population of 66 million.
  Evidence: The Muslim figure is roughly right and the denominator is not, which matters more than it looks. The 2021 census recorded 3.8 million Muslims in England against an England population of around 57.7 million; the UK population is now closer to 70 million. Using 66 million produces a proportion that is wrong either way depending on which country you think is being described, and every percentage elsewhere in the list inherits the error. It is the quietest number on the sheet and it is doing a lot of work.
- Claim: The list must be broadly right, because it is so specific.
  Evidence: Specificity is the technique, not evidence of accuracy. A round assertion invites doubt; '130 sharia courts' sounds like it came from a document. Full Fact has now published corrections in December 2022, February 2025 and September 2026, and the digits have not moved between them. A list that is genuinely tracking a changing country would change. This one is a fixed object that gets redistributed, and the stability of the numbers across four years is the clearest sign that nobody producing it is measuring anything.

## Why people believe it
- Numbers read as neutral. A list of figures presents itself as the opposite of an opinion, and the absence of adjectives feels like the absence of an agenda, even when the selection of what to count is the whole argument.
- Most of the components are real, so spot-checking rewards the reader. Someone who verifies that Muslims in Britain lists over 3,000 locations, or that a named city once had a Muslim mayor, comes away feeling they have confirmed the sheet rather than that they have been handed a stripped-down version of a real source.
- Repetition does the work that evidence cannot. Something encountered for the fourth time on Facebook carries a familiarity that is easily mistaken for corroboration, and this list has been in circulation long enough for that to have happened to a great many people.
- There is no author to distrust. A screenshot with no byline, no publication and no sources cannot be evaluated by the ordinary means, so the reader falls back on whether the content sounds plausible, which is exactly the judgement the sheet is engineered to pass.
- It offers a simple account of complicated things. Housing shortages, wage stagnation and the loss of familiar high streets are difficult and diffuse. A list that names a group and attaches numbers to it converts all of that into one legible cause.

## Open questions
- Where did the list originate? Every version is a screenshot with no attribution, and no fact-check has traced it to a first publication. Whether it began as a deliberate fabrication or as someone's honest but careless summary is unknown, and it changes how the thing should be understood.
- Why has it never adapted? Most viral claims mutate as they are corrected. This one has been publicly taken apart at least three times and comes back with identical digits, which suggests it is being redistributed from stored copies rather than retyped or rewritten by the people sharing it.
- How many mosques are there? This is not a rhetorical question. The ONS does not count places of worship, the available estimates range from about 1,200 to about 1,850 depending on what is being counted, and the absence of an official figure is part of what leaves room for the inflated one.
- Does correction reach the audience at all? Full Fact's checks are thorough and public, and the list is still circulating in the same form four years on. Nothing in the record suggests the two populations overlap much.

## Sources
- Misleading 'fact' sheet about UK Muslims recirculates, Full Fact (2026): https://fullfact.org/culture-and-society/misleading-fact-sheet-muslims-recirculates/
- Viral post with false claims about Muslims in UK circulates again, Full Fact (2025): https://fullfact.org/online/muslims-uk-list-reshared/
- 'Facts' in a graphic about UK Muslims are mostly wrong, Full Fact (2022): https://fullfact.org/online/muslims-in-the-uk/
- Incorrect claims about Muslims in England recirculating on Facebook, Full Fact: https://fullfact.org/online/repeated-claims-about-muslims-in-england/
- List of claims about Muslims in Britain reappears on social media, Full Fact: https://fullfact.org/online/muslims-in-uk-facebook-list/
- Fact-checking claims about Islam's influence in the United Kingdom, The FactCheckHub: https://factcheckhub.com/fact-checking-claims-about-islams-influence-in-the-united-kingdom/
- Viral list disparaging Muslims in the UK debunked, Soch Fact Check: https://www.sochfactcheck.com/viral-list-disparaging-muslims-in-the-uk-debunked/

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/uk-muslim-statistics-sheet