Are the vast majority of the world's refugees from an Islamic background?
A deputy from the far-right Chega party in Portugal sparked controversy on August 1 after claiming in a post on platform X that "85% of refugees are Muslim." The Chega party is known for its hardline stance against immigration and has previously faced accusations of Islamophobia, as its leader André Ventura explicitly called for a "drastic reduction of Islamic presence within the European Union."
Another politician from the party, Pedro Frasao, added that refugees prefer to flee to Western countries rather than seek protection in predominantly Muslim countries. However, experts confirm that these claims are difficult to verify due to the lack of accurate global data tracking the religious affiliation of refugees. The United Nations collects extensive information about displaced persons, but it relies heavily on what governments provide, and many countries do not record religious data.
Germany is the European country hosting the largest number of refugees since 2015, and a government study published in 2021 showed that about 70% of the refugees it received between 2013 and 2019 were Muslims. Globally, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that the number of refugees and people in need of international protection reached about 42.7 million in 2024, along with 73.5 million internally displaced persons and 8.4 million asylum seekers.
The Commission's data also indicated that nearly 70% of refugees in 2024 came from Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Venezuela, and Ukraine. While Islam is the main religion in Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan, Christianity is the predominant religion in Ukraine and Venezuela. Since Ukrainians and Venezuelans together made up about a third of refugees globally, experts believe that it is "unlikely" that 85% of all refugees are Muslims.
Contrary to the claims of the Shiga party, Muslim-majority countries host the largest percentage of refugees. Between 2015 and 2024, Iran and Turkey were at the forefront of the countries that received the largest numbers of asylum seekers, along with Chad and Pakistan. Germany was the only European country in the list of the top seven countries. These figures show that millions of refugees found protection in Islamic countries, which refutes the narrative that they primarily head to the West.