BERLIN, Dec 13: More than 1,000 people converted to Islam in Germany this year, the highest figure on record, and a majority were women who were not married to a Muslim, according to a study released on Tuesday.

“This is a considerable rise,” Salim Abdullah, the director of the Central Institute of Islamic Archives in Germany, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.

The Institute said its statistics showed that 14,352 of the 3.2 million Muslims in Germany are of German descent.

More than 60 per cent of the converts to Muslim are women and most of them are ‘university-educated and affluent’, Mr Abdullah said.

Only a small percentage converted to Islam as a result of marrying a Muslim.

The institute collates information supplied by local Muslim groups, based on applications for visas for Haj. —AFP