Tariq Ramadan in the context of Professor (highest academic rank)

Islam in Switzerland has mostly arrived via immigration since the late second millennium. Numbering below 1% of total population in 1980, the fraction of Muslims in the population of permanent residents in Switzerland has quintupled in thirty years, estimated at just above 5% as of 2013. The Turks and those from The Balkans (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania) make up the largest group. There is also a large North African community (most of them are from Tunisia and Morocco) and a significant Middle Eastern community. This is because, in the 1960s and 1970s, Switzerland encouraged young men from Yugoslavia and Turkey to come as guest workers. Initially these young men were only planning on staying in Switzerland temporarily, however, revised Swiss immigration laws in the 1970s permitted family regrouping. Consequently, these men ended up staying in Switzerland as these new laws allowed the wives and children of these young men into the country. Since this time period, most of the Muslim immigration to Switzerland stems from asylum seekers arriving primarily from Eastern Europe. In more recent years, there has been migration from Turkey, the Balkans (mainly Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina), Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Somalia, and Tunisia.

The vast majority of Muslims in Switzerland adhere to the Sunni Islam branch. Notable Swiss Muslims include Tariq Ramadan, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Granit Xhaka, Xherdan Shaqiri and Isabelle Eberhardt.

European Islam, or Euro-Islam, is a hypothesized new branch of Islam that historically originated and developed among the European peoples of the Balkans (primarily Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and European Turkey, but also in Bulgaria, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, countries with sizable Muslim minorities). These communities, alongside those in some republics of Russia, constitute a large population which constitute large populations of European Muslims. Historically significant Muslim populations in Europe include Azerbaijanis, Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians, Balkan Turks, Bosniaks, Böszörmény, Chechens, Circassians, Cretan Turks, Crimean Tatars, Gajals, Gorani, Greek Muslims, Ingush, Khalyzians, Kazakhs, Lipka Tatars, Muslim Albanians, Muslim Romani people, Pomaks, Torbeshi, Turks, Turkish Cypriots, Vallahades, Volga Tatars, Yörüks, and Megleno-Romanians from Notia today living in East Thrace, although the majority are secular.

The terms "European Islam" and "Euro-Islam" were originally introduced at a conference that took place in Birmingham in 1988, presided by Carl E. Olivestam, senior lecturer at Umeå University, and subsequently published in the Swedish handbook Kyrkor och alternativa rörelser ("Churches and Alternative Movements"). "European Islam" defines the ongoing debate on the social integration of Muslim populations in Western European countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. There are three Islamic scholars who participate in the debate on "Euro-Islam": Enes Karić, Bassam Tibi, and Tariq Ramadan, who adopted the term in the second half of the 1990s but use it with different meanings. The foremost Western, Non-Muslim scholars of political science and/or Islamic studies involved in the debate on "Euro-Islam" are Jocelyne Cesari, Jørgen S. Nielsen, and Olivier Roy.