Fifty years ago you could count the Muslims in Iceland on your fingers. Today well over two thousand people are registered in Muslim congregations, and three of them run prayer halls in Reykjavík. This is the short story of that change.
Seven people
When he came in the 1970s, there were seven Muslims here.
The first Muslims came to Iceland in small numbers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of those involved in founding the first association later recalled that when he arrived there were only seven Muslims in the country; then a group of 20 to 30 friends formed, and slowly grew. They prayed at home or together in borrowed rooms; there was no mosque and no association.
Many came with little and meant to stay only a short while. Another participant in the same study described setting out in 1971 with eight pounds in his pocket, planning to work here for three months on his way to America. He found work, married, went to university, worked at sea, in fish factories and in construction, “and I never got to America, and I do not regret that”.
The first association
On 25 February 1997 Islam became a registered religion in Iceland.
Félag múslima á Íslandi, the Muslim Association of Iceland, was founded in 1997 by Salmann Tamimi, a Palestinian who had settled here, and recognised as a religious association on 25 February that year. A year later it had 74 registered members. The association set up a mosque on the third floor of Ármúli 38, still in use and open to visitors. In 2010 Ibrahim Sverrir Agnarsson became chair, and by 2014 there were 465 registered members. More than half of them were born in Iceland, according to the association itself.
More congregations
A growing community often divides into more congregations, and it happened here too.
In late 2008 a group split from the Muslim Association and founded Menningarsetur múslima á Íslandi, the Islamic Cultural Centre of Iceland, first in an office building on Grensásvegur. In 2010 Stofnun múslima á Íslandi, the Islamic Foundation of Iceland, was founded, linked to the Swedish Al Risala foundation; it bought Ýmishúsið in Skógarhlíð, a building put up by a male-voice choir, and converted it to a mosque. The Cultural Centre moved in in 2013. A dispute over the lease went to court, and in 2016 the Cultural Centre had to leave the building. It is now in Skútuvogur, while the Islamic Foundation runs the Grand Mosque in Ýmishúsið.
Relations have improved over time. In 2017 the Cultural Centre’s imam gave the Friday sermon at the mosque in Ármúli, and in 2018 the two congregations celebrated Eid al-Fitr together. The three congregations teach the same prayer, the same fast and the same Qur’an, and the prayer times they publish are almost identical, as described in the sources for the times.
The plot
The first building in Iceland made as a mosque has yet to be built.
In 2013 the City of Reykjavík granted the Muslim Association a plot for a mosque. The decision set off a heated public debate over the next two years, which the study cited here examines in detail. Construction did not begin, and in autumn 2026 the city withdrew the grant. Every mosque in Iceland is therefore still in a building made for something else.
Today
In October 2026, 2,383 people were registered in the three congregations.
According to Registers Iceland, 1,007 were registered with the Islamic Foundation, 708 with the Cultural Centre and 668 with the Muslim Association in October 2026. Registering with a religious association is voluntary and religion is not part of official statistics, so there are more Muslims in Iceland than that. The study estimates about a thousand in 2009 and just under three thousand in 2020, partly because of refugees arriving after 2015.
Their roots are all over the world. The largest groups are from Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans, from Morocco and North Africa, and from West Asia, with growing numbers from sub-Saharan Africa and from South and South-East Asia. And some of them are Icelanders, born here or having embraced Islam.
Salmann Tamimi died in 2020. Details of the congregations, their addresses and activities are on the Mosques in Iceland page.
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقۡنَٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرٖ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلۡنَٰكُمۡ شُعُوبٗا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ أَكۡرَمَكُمۡ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتۡقَىٰكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٞ
O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted