Therefore, the State cannot force someone to adhere to a certain religion nor can it ask someone to which religion he or she adheres. This article takes a look at the religious composition of the country.Over half the population, 58%, identifies as Roman Catholic although regular church attendance has dropped by more than half since the late 90’s. The capital city of Brussels and the surrounding Brussels-Capital Region are officially bilingual and are located in a mostly French-speaking enclave within the Flemish Region. Belgium’s population is expected to be affected by increasing globalization and migratory patterns. >
Islam in Belgium. With three languages under one roof, what can go wrong? Moreover, studies show that the Belgian people are growing less and less religious; fewer people attend religious services regularly and the percentage of agnostics and atheists in the country has been on the rise since the 1970s. As in many of the other countries belonging to the European Union, the Muslim population in Belgium is very young. Thus normal elections took place. Numbers for both these groups have risen steadily over the past two decades—evidence that the population of Belgium, and of Europe as a whole, is slowly turning away from religion to a more secular way of life. All Rights Reserved. Geographically, Belgium straddles the ethnic and cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe and is home to two main cultural and linguistic groups: the Dutch-speaking, mostly Flemish community, which makes up roughly 59 percent of the population; and the French-speaking, mostly Walloon population, comprising 41 percent of Belgian inhabitants. This flourishing happened under the watchful eye of the Merovingian dynasty, and later of Charlemagne, who even waged war to impose the new religion. ), as well as Islam and Judaism. The second-most practiced faith in Belgium is Islam, accounting for about 6-8 percent of the population. Statistical data from shows a heavy concentration of Muslim Moroccans (125,000) and Turks (70,000) in Belgium, with smaller numbers hailing from Algeria (8,500), Tunisia (4,000), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Egypt. Belgium Population Demographics Religion Percentage 2017. Hertogen’s methodology has been criticized by the Belgian Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, headed by Jozef De Witte, for being too simplistic, leading to distorted results. However, a recent independent report showed that a majority of the population (roughly 62 percent) adheres to some form of Christianity: nearly 60 percent of the Belgian population self identifies as Roman Catholic, and another two percent of the population self identifies as either Protestant (1.7%) or Orthodox (0.3%). Islam in Europe The largest unrecognized religions in the country include the Jehovah's Witnesses, with 27,000 members and Mormons, with about 3,000 members. After attaining self-rule from the federal state level in religious matters, the Parliament of Flanders enacted a new Flemish regional decree on recognized religious denominations, installing democratically elected church councils for all recognized religious denominations and made them subject to the same administrative rules as local government bodies—with important repercussions as far as financial accounting and open government are concerned. Belgium is a sovereign state in Western Europe, bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg and the North Sea. There has recently, however, been a significant immigration of Jews from other European countries (namely from France and the Netherlands) and Israel to Belgium. The Muslim population is most concentrated in Brussels (20% of the total population) with most other Muslims living in the industrial areas of the French-speaking south. Most Muslims living in Belgium adhere to the Sunni denomination of the faith. Some religious people dispute the precise figures, as it is unclear how many Belgians who say they believe in God are actually Christians and how many who call themselves Christians, but refuse the label "Catholic", have severed all links to the Catholic Church.