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This article claims that five million Muslims are attempting to move to European countries.

Apparently the numbers that they’ve been selling to their unsuspecting populations are wrong by at least four million. The latest invasion reflects a truer number of five million, not one million — five million invaders. If that’s not war, what is?

Ignoring the highly emotive use of the word "invasion", I am interested whether the numbers claimed in this article have any factual basis or not.

Sakib Arifin
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  • The source of the OP claim is http://www.umkreis-institut.de/umkreis-online/heinz-buschkowsky-ehemaliger-bezirksbuergermeister-von-berlin-neukoelln-prophezeit-5-millionen-asylanten-zztag/ Basically it is a prediction by a mayor of a district of Berlin. I think he really predicts "3-5 million" http://de.europenews.dk/Buschkowsky-prophezeit-5-Millionen-Asylanten-122057.html – DavePhD Dec 09 '16 at 20:26
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    Let's also ignore the implication that migration is an act of war. – phoog Dec 11 '16 at 14:11

2 Answers2

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According to Unhcr.org there is a total number of 4,835,187 refugees from Syria. I guess that's where the number comes from. Not all go go Europe, and there are 972,012 asylum applications according to unhcr.org.

Refugees from Syria is 29% of the total (2015) of the total 1.26 million according to europe.eu.

And we know not all go to Europe as well. 2.5 million (that would mean about half of them) have gone to Saudi Arabia according to Aljazeera.

Sakib Arifin
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liftarn
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    And that would be assuming all Syrian refugees are Muslim. – called2voyage Apr 29 '16 at 14:44
  • @called2voyage It's probably a safe assumption that the percentage of non-muslims in the Syrian refugees is higher than the percentage of Syrians that are staying put, but without hard numbers it's tricky to say anything. – Shadur Apr 29 '16 at 15:17
  • @Shadur Right, either way a significant portion may indeed be Muslim, but it is an assumption, not a fact. Thus "five million" is a bit of a stretch if it is based on the Syrian refugees since that number is just under 5 million for the total regardless of religion. – called2voyage Apr 29 '16 at 15:19
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    @called2voyage And that is assuming all of them go to Europe. And we know not all do that. 2.5 million (that would mean about half of them) have gone to Saudi Arabia according to http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/saudi-arabia-denies-giving-syrians-sanctuary-150912050746572.html – liftarn May 09 '16 at 12:56
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    This assumes that the people who are trying to get to Europe are Syrian refugees. There are numerous claims that significant numbers are actually economical refuges from all over the Middle East and North Africa. – vartec May 09 '16 at 19:08
  • @vartec The Syrian refugees is 29% and the total number of asylum seekers in Europe is 1.26 million so it's still far from the 5 million claimed. – liftarn May 10 '16 at 06:43
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    @SVilcans Just FYI, Mohammad has discovered that the 2.5 mil going to Saudi are not included in the UNHCR ~4.8 mil count. – called2voyage May 12 '16 at 15:27
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According to officials reports of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are 4,835,909 registered Syrian refugees (as of may 2016). I assume the estimate comes from there. That's slightly less than 5 million.

But the claim that "five million Muslims march on Europe" is blatantly false. Many of them are not Muslim and the overwhelming majority of them are registered in Muslim majority countries. The report says:

This figure includes 2.1 million Syrians registered by UNHCR in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, 2.7 million Syrians registered by the Government of Turkey, as well as more than 29,000 Syrian refugees registered in North Africa.

The report also states that 1,004,345 Syrian refugees are seeking asylum in Europe (between Apr 2011 and Mar 2016). it's worth noting that many of the are not Muslim.

Also, according to Reuters and Al jazeera, Saudi Arabia has taken 2.5 million Syrians but Saudi government didn't register them as refugees because that would degrade them. The report states:

But Gulf states say they have taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrians since the civil war there began in 2011, just not as refugees.

The source said Saudi Arabia had received nearly 2.5 million Syrians since the conflict erupted.

"[Saudi Arabia] was keen to not deal with them as refugees, or to put them in refugee camps, to preserve their dignity and safety, and gave them complete freedom of movement."

"[Saudi Arabia] gave whoever chose to stay in the kingdom, which are in the hundreds of thousands, proper residency ... with all the rights that are included like free health care and engaging in the workforce and education."

The kingdom has also provided about $700m in humanitarian aid to Syrians and had set up clinics in various refugee camps, the statement by the SPA said.

The official source said more than 100,000 Syrian students were receiving free education in the kingdom.

Sakib Arifin
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  • I do like the formatting of your answer, but given that it is based (entirely?) on S Vilcans's answer I'm having trouble understanding why you didn't edit and accept his. I'm refraining from upvoting for that reason. – called2voyage May 11 '16 at 19:54
  • Because his answer is a bit misleading. The 2.5 million Syrians who are living in Saudi are not refugees. Editing his answer would change the meaning of his answer. That's why I wrote my own. – Sakib Arifin May 11 '16 at 20:00
  • Did you ask him to include this in his answer? – called2voyage May 11 '16 at 20:01
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    Also, even if they are not *de jure* refugees, they are still *de facto* refugees by definition. – called2voyage May 11 '16 at 20:02
  • But they are not included in the unhcr list. – Sakib Arifin May 11 '16 at 20:05
  • Which is a good point and why I'm curious why you didn't ask S Vilcans to update his answer. – called2voyage May 11 '16 at 20:06
  • Synthesizing new answers from old ones is not against the rules. (The original Stack Overflow founders predicted that, where several completing answers existed, someone might merge them into one canonical answer and get the votes.) But acknowledging your sources in the answer, especially like this that is so close to another, is polite and avoids plagiarism charges. – Oddthinking May 12 '16 at 00:40
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    @MohammadSakibArifin why do characterize Turkey as a country "far away from Europe" when in fact part of Turkey is Europe. – DavePhD Nov 02 '16 at 14:50
  • @DavePhD The vast vast majority of Syrian 3 million refugees of Turkey are in the asian part. https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e32a1f6800b12bcdf03044303f362776?convert_to_webp=true – Sakib Arifin Dec 09 '16 at 19:33
  • @MohammadSakibArifin is the red dot for Istanbul biggest just because it's the capital? or does that mean it has the most refugees? – DavePhD Dec 09 '16 at 19:35
  • "there are currently more Syrian refugees in Istanbul than in all the rest of Europe" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/27/istanbul-has-more-syrian-refugees-than-all-of-europe-says-david-miliband – DavePhD Dec 09 '16 at 19:38
  • @DavePhD that maybe true but that still makes the claim false. I got what you are saying, I will update the post tomorrow. It's pretty late here. I am going to sleep. Good Night. – Sakib Arifin Dec 09 '16 at 19:41
  • @MohammadSakibArifin Some numbers for the EU are here :https://fullfact.org/immigration/asylum-seekers-uk-and-europe/ and then you would need to add the other European countries like Turkey (or at least part of Turkey). Also some data here http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:First_time_asylum_applicants,_EU-28,_January_2015_%E2%80%93_June_2016.png 5,000,000 would take about 4-5 years at the current rate of about 100,000 per month, for just EU countries. – DavePhD Dec 09 '16 at 19:50