Minority Faiths: Jewish, Muslim & Sikh Scotland

• Jewish Scotland is old and small. Organised congregations existed in Edinburgh from 1816 and in Glasgow from the 1820s. Garnethill Synagogue in Glasgow, opened in 1879, is the oldest surviving synagogue building in Scotland. The 2022 census recorded 5,847 people of Jewish religion, and 7,313 when those who identify as ethnically Jewish are included.
• Islam is now the second-largest religion. Most Scottish Muslims trace their roots to Pakistan, and Glasgow Central Mosque opened in 1984.
• Sikh pedlars came first. Early Sikh settlers in the 1920s and 1930s were mostly Bhatra Sikhs working as door-to-door traders. The 2022 census recorded 10,988 Sikhs by religion (11,235 on the broader measure).
• Glasgow is the centre. Most minority faith communities are concentrated in Glasgow and its suburbs, with significant communities in Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.
• Political firsts followed. Mohammad Sarwar became the UK's first Muslim MP in 1997, for Glasgow Govan. Humza Yousaf became First Minister in 2023.

Individual Jews are recorded in Scotland from the late seventeenth century. Organised communities formed in Edinburgh by 1816 and in Glasgow in the 1820s. Migration from Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century brought thousands to Glasgow, especially to the Gorbals, where Yiddish was heard in the streets and Jewish tailors, cabinetmakers and traders set up business.

Glasgow's Jewish community before 1914

The historian Ben Braber's work on immigrant Scotland fills in this picture. By 1914 about 7,000 Jews lived in Glasgow and about 1,000 in Edinburgh. The early settlers were mostly retailers and small manufacturers. The best known was Benjamin Simons, whose wholesale fruit business, founded in Glasgow in the 1840s, used cold storage and faster transport to bring fresh fruit within ordinary people's reach. In 1880 the Glasgow weekly The Bailie credited him with making fruit "no longer a luxury to our city".

The arrival of Russian and Polish Jews from the 1880s changed the community. Most of the newcomers worked in the clothing, furniture and tobacco trades, many as low-paid workers in small workshops. More than 300 Jewish men were working as hawkers in 1911, a large share of all hawkers in Scotland. The community built its own welfare system and mutual-benefit societies to help newcomers become independent. Almost all Jewish children went through Scottish schools, and a high number went on to university, especially to study medicine. Kenneth Collins has traced a line of Jewish medical students coming to Scotland back to the early eighteenth century.

Jews also entered public life. In 1883 Benjamin's son Michael Simons won a seat on Glasgow Town Council against the Reverend Robert Thomson, a founder of the Scottish Protestant Alliance. According to the Jewish Chronicle, Thomson campaigned under the cry "No Jews and no Jesuits". Simons became Glasgow's first councillor of immigrant descent. Emanuel Shinwell started out representing Jewish tailors on the Glasgow Trades Council and rose to become MP for West Lothian (1922) and Secretary for Mines (1924).

As families prospered, many moved to the southern suburbs such as Giffnock and Newton Mearns, which remain the community's heart. The population has declined since its mid-century peak. The Scottish Jewish Archives Centre at Garnethill preserves the community's history.

Muslim seamen, many from British India, were present in Glasgow and other ports in the early twentieth century. The great growth came after 1945, with migration from Pakistan, often from the Punjab and Kashmir. Many Pakistani migrants started as bus drivers, factory workers and pedlars, then opened shops and businesses across Scotland.

Glasgow Central Mosque opened in 1984 on the banks of the Clyde. The community is now in its third and fourth generations and spans many backgrounds, including Arab, Turkish, Somali and convert Scots.

The first Sikh settlers, from the 1920s, were mainly Bhatra Sikhs who travelled as pedlars, selling clothes and goods door to door. Glasgow's first gurdwara was established soon afterwards. Post-war migration from the Punjab expanded the community, and gurdwaras now operate in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and elsewhere.

Scotland is also home to Hindu, Buddhist, Bahá'í and other communities, as well as a fast-growing share of people with no religion. That group is now the largest single category in the census.

Minority faith communities have faced discrimination and hostility, including antisemitism and anti-Muslim abuse.

The early twentieth century shows how this worked. Anti-alien agitation, aimed mainly at Russian Jews, led to the Aliens Act of 1905, the first major British law to restrict immigration. In 1909 Oscar Slater, a German Jew, was wrongly convicted in Glasgow of the murder of Marion Gilchrist. Braber argues that this was largely because he was assumed to be a violent pimp. The Edinburgh Evening News described Slater and his associates as "a brood of alien vampires". His conviction was quashed in 1928. Braber notes that such language was unusual in Scotland. Jewish leaders responded quietly: during the Slater trial they chose to stay silent, and they privately rebuked a minister who joined the campaign to free him. Jews in Scotland did not face large-scale violence until 1947, when events in Palestine set off anti-Jewish riots in Glasgow. That history is one reason the claim that Scotland "never persecuted Jews" does not hold. Scotland's sectarian divides between Protestant and Catholic have sometimes overshadowed these experiences. Yet many members of these communities describe a strong Scottish identity, and interfaith groups such as Interfaith Scotland have worked to build understanding.

• Garnethill Synagogue is a listed building and houses the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre.
• Mohammad Sarwar, elected for Glasgow Govan in 1997, was the first Muslim MP anywhere in the UK.
• In 1883 a Glasgow council candidate campaigned with the cry "No Jews and no Jesuits", and lost to the Jewish fruit merchant Michael Simons.
• "No religion" is now the largest single response to the census religion question in Scotland.

• Census answers are self-reported, and the religion question is voluntary.
• Historical population figures before modern censuses are estimates.
• "Never persecuted Jews": this popular claim does not stand up to scrutiny. The Slater case, the 1905 Aliens Act agitation and the Glasgow riots of 1947 all count against it.
• Early numbers: the 1914 figures of about 7,000 Jews in Glasgow and 1,000 in Edinburgh are historians' estimates, because the census recorded nationality, not religion Estimates differ even within the same book: Stewart J. Brown's chapter in the Oxford Handbook gives about 10,000 Jews in Glasgow and 1,500 in Edinburgh by 1900, higher than Braber's figures for 1914.

• New Scots
• Irish Catholic Scotland
• The Scottish Diaspora
• Sectarian Scotland