The history of Islam in the Netherlands began in the 16th century with the Ottoman occupation of the port cities of the country, and thanks to the converted Dutch and Dutch sailors.

From the seventeenth century, the presence of Muslims was accentuated by the arrival of Turkish slaves in the Netherlands and Muslims from the Dutch East Indies.

During the golden century of the Netherlands (between 1584 and 1702), the Muslim population grew slightly.

Around 1945, the Netherlands welcomed a wave of Muslim refugees from Indonesia, during the bloody Indonesian national revolution.

Between 1960 and 1970, lots of Turkish and Moroccan immigrant settled in the country for work.

Recently, during the 1990s, the Netherlands started receiving political refugees, coming mainly from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2008, the Dutch Statistics Office estimated the number of Muslims at 825,000, or about 4.9% of the Dutch population.

In 2010, new statistics show that the majority of Muslims in the Netherlands are Moroccans (355,883) and Turks (325,000). They are followed by Surinamese (34,000), Afghans (31,000) and Iraqis (27,000). Most of them live in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.