Bulgaria is the European Union's most Islamic country with its one million Muslims accounting for about one-seventh of the population, the Financial Times wrote in its latest issue.

The article however dismisses claims that Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the twenty-first century at the latest.

Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University who studies European Muslims, says: "It's being advocated by people who don't consult the numbers. All these claims are really emotional claims."

Sometimes they are made by Muslim or far-right groups, who share an interest in exaggerating the numbers, the FT comments.

Nominal Muslims - whether religious or not - account for 3-4 per cent of the European Union's total population of 493m.

According to the FT their percentage should rise, but far more modestly than the extreme predictions, mainly because Muslims, both in Europe and the main "emigrating countries" of Turkey and north Africa, are having fewer babies.

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