Islam is a minority religion in Finland. The first Muslims were Tatars who immigrated mainly between 1870 and 1920. After that there were decades with generally a small number of immigration in Finland. Since the late 20th century the number of Muslims in Finland has increased rapidly due to immigration. Nowadays, there are dozens of Islamic communities in Finland, but only a minority of Muslims have joined them. Projecting from 2010 data, Pew Research Center estimated that in 2016 about 2.7% of Finland's 5.5 million population was Muslim. In the high migration scenario, Finland's Muslim population could grow to 15% by 2050 which would equal almost a million Muslims in Finland. Baltic Tatars The Baltic Tatars arrived in Finland as merchants and soldiers at the end of the 19th century. They were adherents of Sunni Islam and spoke one of the Turkic languages. They were later joined by other family members and formed the first Islamic congregation, the Finnish Islamic Association (), which was founded in 1925 after Finland had become independent from Russia and in 1922 passed a law on religious freedom. In practice, this society only accepts people from Tatar origin, or Turkic origin in general, as members, excluding non-Turkic speaking Muslims. The Finnish Tatars's Islamic congregations have a total of about 1,000 members these days. By and large, Tatars remained the only Muslims in Finland until the start of the 1960s. Modern immigration By the early 1980s, several hundred Muslims predominantly from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) had immigrated as students, laborers and spouses. In 1987 they formed the association. Due to the number of immigrants and refugees, the number of Muslims in Finland rose considerably in the early 1990s, predominantly they were from the aforementioned MENA countries as well as Somalia and the Balkans. Soon new immigrants established their own mosques and societies. In 1996 these groups came together to form a cooperative organ - the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Finland. It is estimated that approximately 1,000 Finns have converted to Islam. The vast majority of these are women who have married Muslim men. By 2003, the number of Muslims had increased to 20 000 and there were about 30 mosques. The majority of Muslims were Sunni as well as some Shia refugees from Iraq. Like most countries in Western Europe, Muslims tend to live in the larger cities of Finland like Helsinki,