More Dutch Muslims are skipping the mosque

Churches in the Netherlands have been emptying out for some time, but a new study shows that mosque attendance too is declining.

The number of Dutch Muslims who go to mosque at least once a month has dropped by 12 percent from 47 percent ten years ago to 35 percent today.

That is the conclusion of a report, Religion at the beginning of the 21st century, published on Wednesday by the Dutch statistics office CBS. The report is a follow-up to a 2001 study about religion in the Netherlands in the 20th century. It also shows that - contrary to popular belief - the number of Muslims in the Netherlands has not grown in the past few years.

According to the latest statistics there were about 825,000 Muslims living in the Netherlands in the 2007-2008 period. Over the last four years the number of Muslims has remained more or less the same. About 45 percent of all non-Western immigrants in the Netherlands are Muslim. Compared to 1999, Islam has grown from 3 to 4 percent of believers.

The decline in mosque attendance is part of a general trend in the Netherlands. A 2006 report by the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (Scientific council for government policy) already noted that church attendance was down, even as people were still describing themselves as believers.

Regular church attendance declined for all age groups in the 1999-2008 period, the CBS study shows. In 2008, only 13 percent of young people attended church on a regular basis. In the over-75 age group, 34 percent were churchgoers. The sharpest decline was in the 55 to 64 age group: from to 33 percent in 1999 to 22 percent in 2008. As a general rule, the more educated people are, the less they go to church.

Overall, 58 percent of people over 18 say they belong to a church (compared to 100 percent in the 1849 census). Protestant Groningen is the least religious with only 37 percent saying they belong to a church; Catholic Limburg is the most religious with 82 percent.

Among Catholics and Protestants, men are more religious than women (56 percent). Among Muslims, women are more religious. Eighty percent of non-Western immigrants say they are religious, and 52 percent of those are women (whereas only 48 percent of Dutch Muslims are women.) On the other hand, men go to mosque more often: 34 percent of Muslim men go at least every week compared to only 14 percent of women.

Last year, half of all Dutch Muslims attended mosque "rarely or not at all". Almost a quarter went regularly.

Overall, only one in five Dutch people attended a religious service of any kind at least once a month in 2008.

According to Jan Latten, CBS demographer and professor of demography at the university of Amsterdam, believers are less in need of institutions than before. "Religion has become more of a personal matter. It is a general trend that is now touching the Muslim community as well."