May 23, 2007
The collapse of Europe
If you happen to be passing though Malibu next month, why not pop into an intriguing-sounding conference at Pepperdine University on "The Collapse of Europe". One of the early sessions is entitled - "Eurabia: Is Muslim domination of Europe inevitable?"
My answer to this is "No" it’s not inevitable. In fact, given that the Muslim population of Europe is just 4% at the moment, I would say it’s highly unlikely. But don’t trying telling that to an audience of American conservatives. The idea that Europe is about to be submerged by the Muslim hordes seems to be almost recieved wisdom over there. It is certainly a notion that has launched a great many books. There is “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis” by Bat Ye’or; “While Europe Slept – How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within” by Bruce Bawer; “The Death of the West” by Pat Buchanan; and “The Cube and the Cathedral” by George Weigel.
I was depressed to see that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch politician is taking part in the Pepperdine conference. She is a highly intelligent and courageous woman, so it’s a shame to see that she is mixing with buffoons like Mark Steyn, who is giving the keynote address at the conference.
Steyn is the author of the most successful recent book about the alleged Muslim takeover of Europe. “America Alone” earned its author a place in the New York Times best-seller list and praise from President Bush.
Mr Steyn argues that – “Europe has all but succumbed to the dull opiate of multiculturalism.” Indeed “a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman” – a Muslim general who made it to the outskirts of Paris in 732. With apparent relish Mr Steyn predicts a “Eurabian civil war”. The weak-kneed elites will succumb to militant Islam. But an “unreconstructed minority” will turn to “neo-nationalist strongmen”. The poor old Europeans can’t win. It’s either appeasement or fascism.
It is alarming stuff. So it is comforting to recall that Mr Steyn has been disastrously wrong about many things in the past. I’ve just looked up a piece that he filed from Iraq in June 2003, in which he confidently informed his readers that everything was fine - "a vast number of bureaucrats are running around Iraq with unlimted budgets in search of a human catastrophe that doesn’t exist." This is vintage Steyn - jeering, complacent and utterly stupid.
Steyn’s Iraq epic ended with him sitting in an Iraqi cafe, watching a BBC television report suggesting that there was a crisis in Baghdad’s hospitals. Once again, Steyn knew better. He sneered at:
"the blazing lights of round-the-clock CNN and BBC camera crews filming their reporter yakking away in front of a telegenic moppet whose acute tonsillitis is somehow all Rumsfeld’s fault. These days, I always laugh my head off at BBC World reports. And, in that Ramadi cafe, I was touched to find that, even though most of them hadn’t a clue what he was going on about, within half a minute, the rest of the crowd was roaring along with me."
Ah Iraq - if only the rest of the world could see the funny side. In fact, I have a suggestion for Mr Steyn. When he has finished lecturing the inmates at Pepperdine, perhaps he could repeat his trip to Iraq and see if it’s still as hilarious as the last time.
Yes, let’s ask the courageous NeoCons like Ms. Hirsi Ali and Mr. Steyn to hold their next meeting of the American Enterprise Institute in Baghdad or Ramadi. It is going to be a hell of a “Brain Bang” (literally with bits of the grey matter splattering the walls - Yuck!).
imho, all this talk of Eurabia is nothing but very thinly disguised racism against European Muslims.
(YES YES, I know Islam is not a race but Western European Muslims mainly originate from the Indian subcontinent, North Africa and Turkey with a fair smattering of Middle Eastern people and others who are mainly visible minorities.)
Thus, Islamophobia remains the only accepted form of prejudice and racism, even among the relatively liberal folk who use Muslims as punch bags on grounds their antipathy to homosexuals and their supposed restriction of women’s rights.
I live in a city that is called “Londonistan” by one of those morons and there is no evidence of such a takeover by the Muslims who, for the most part, are a hard working and law abiding minority who contribute fully to the rich tapestry of life in this wonderful metropolis. (Just take a walk around the Bangladeshi quarters of Brick Lane to see how how white, black and brown enjoy the excellent and very reasonably priced food every evening.)
If I were an American I would mind my own business and perhaps worry about a few things in my own country like:
- How was the US led by a tiny minority into a disastrous war and why such a tiny portion of people have such vast hold over the gormless majority?
- How do you stop the above leading America into more disastrous misadventures?
- How the Latino population is going to expand and evolve over the coming decades and its effects on the cohesion of the US society?
- Will there be water for the ever thirsty California, Nevada etc.?
- Will the Chinese, the Japanese and others continue to lend the US money to support its profligate life style?
- Will the education system produce enough qualified talent to support the US industry?
- Who will pay for the baby boomers’ health care and pensions?
P
Posted by: Pacifist | May 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm | Report this commentSadly, human beings seemed to have evolved to fear change. What the opponents of cultural mixing seem to fail to realise is that this process has historically almost always been a ‘race to the top’ (with each culture adopting the other’s best practices, albeit after some grumbling), rather than a race to the bottom.
Good for Europe, I say - immigration will only increase its dynamism.
Posted by: Andrei T. | May 23rd, 2007 at 5:09 pm | Report this commentInternational Conference about the Collapse of Europe
California’s Pepperdine University is hosting a conference about the Eurabia nonsense. Some of the topics of discussions have a few questionmarks, but it is clear in which direction they are going. Some samples: 1. What has been the role of Islam and
Posted by: Atlantic Review | May 24th, 2007 at 11:20 am | Report this commentPeriodic spasms launched by racist and nativist movements are as American as apple pie. This rubbish about Muslims is just the sorry, tattered heir of Know Nothings, Chinese exclusion, Palmer Raids, and assorted other panics about The Other. Many of us Americans recognize these people as the “utterly stupid buffoons” that Mr. Rachman rightly calls them. Unfortunately, they also have a lot of money…
Posted by: Alan R | May 24th, 2007 at 8:13 pm | Report this commentPacifist 4:55 wrote:
“Thus, Islamophobia remains the only accepted form of prejudice and racism, even among the relatively liberal folk who use Muslims as punch bags on grounds their antipathy to homosexuals and their supposed restriction of women’s rights.”
I won’t quibble with the assertion that Islamists aren’t particularly fond of homosexuals; however, the assertion that women are not deprived of basic civil liberties in Muslim-dominated countries is simply absurd.
The term “Islamophobia” is designed to conjur up the idea of an irrational fear or hatred of Islam founded on narrow-minded ignorance. However, the hatred of pan-Islamic terrorism is arises neither from ignorance nor prejudice, but from clear-headed thinking about the future of civilization if the problem is not adequately addressed.
Posted by: Nathan Earle | May 24th, 2007 at 8:35 pm | Report this commentNathan Earle is right. Some criticism of islam is justified. It doesn’t say ‘islam as a religion’ is wrong, but some muslims are a potential threat to the civilisation. It is a fact that women’s rights in the islamic world are deprived. Some imams clame ‘non believers must be killed’. What would muslims say if there was a world wide christian or buddhist movement saying ‘all muslims must die’. There are many imams who say it, this problem must be addressed and this is not to say that ‘islam as a religion’ is bad. But denying this problems by muslims is a big concern.
Posted by: Chen | May 24th, 2007 at 8:52 pm | Report this commentThere must be a reason why all countries where people pray 5 times a day are poor. Only oil helps them not to die from hunger, and that is only applicable to the chosen minority.
It is good to respect elders and so on, but it doesn’t make much sense to follow blindly scholars who haven’t read a book apart from quran.
Is it ignorance or denial? Reminds me of an old joke: A pollster came to the door and asked whether ignorance or apathy was the biggest problem in the world today? The answer was, “Go away, I don’t know and I don’t care.”
I suggest that Europeans very well ought to care and inform themselves about what’s happening in their countries. Now, if they don’t care about free speech, about religion (after all, that’s largely passe), about having a drink now and then and don’t mind a public beheading or two, then a change in the social conditions in Europe won’t matter. Ooops, as in Somalia, no football, no TV either.
This is one of the most ill-informed and stupid pieces I have ever read in the Financial Times and that is saying a lot. That this writer is the chief foreign affairs columnist for the FT is incredible. What world do they live in?
Muslim population in Europe is probably 30 million, counting recent immigrants, former immigrants and their progency, and that’s probably a low number. The UN just reported that another 70 million will enter Europe by 2050, mostly from Muslim lands. With birth rates being what they are that’s well over 100 million by 2050, as the native population is shrinking by 25% or so since they aren’t bothering to have babies. So Muslims will be one-quarter to one-third of the population by 2050, most of that in Western Europe, so France and nearby countries will be more heavily Islamic. And then some want Turkey to join the EU, with free movement of peoples. Add another, what, 70, 80 million in the year 2015 or 2020, 98% of whom are Muslim, mostly poor. Europe’s 440 million will have shrunk to 350-325 million and Muslims will be half or more if Turkey is admitted. Will European values, customs and ways of life be the same then? The writer can chuckle at Mark Steyn (read his book and you won’t laugh), but the writer should read what the esteemed historian Walter Laqueur has just written: “The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent.” It’s not even a wake-up call. He fears it’s too late for that.
Posted by: Fran | May 25th, 2007 at 2:20 am | Report this commentIn defense of Steyn, the crisis everyone predicted immediately after the invasion of Iraq was humanitarian: starvation, millions of refugees fleeing to camps set up in Jordan, etc. Years later, when sectarian warfare accelerated, you did get those millions of refugees leaving. But not in 2003. It’s intellectually dishonest to judge Steyn’s contemporaneous comments about Iraq in 2003 by the condition of Iraq four years later; much has changed, and Steyn’s comments at the time were accurate.
Posted by: Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon | May 25th, 2007 at 7:57 am | Report this commentInteresting post, thanks. I enjoyed reading your Pakistan series as well.
Posted by: strategist | May 25th, 2007 at 9:19 am | Report this commentFran | May 25, 2007 at 02:20 AM wrote:
>>Now, if they don’t care about free speech, about religion (after all, that’s largely passe), about having a drink now and then and don’t mind a public beheading or two, then a change in the social conditions in Europe won’t matter. Ooops, as in Somalia, no football, no TV either.<<
People who would want to live under such conditions would emigrate to Iran (if there), not to Europe. Being born and raised in an Islamic country or to Muslim parents does not magically turn the person into some alien with inexplicable motivations - topical idiosyncrasies aside, we are all strikingly similar in our fundamental desire for pleasure. Sure, historical traditions play some role in the shaping of ideas about what is pleasant, but this is mostly in the early stages, and by the third or fourth generation, the mores of ancestral lands seem quaint, at best. There will also always doubtless be a lunatic fringe - such is the unavoidable cost freedom. However, so long as such fringes emerge in civilised societies with strong institutions and free flow of information, they never fail to fall into obscurity after having caused a minimum of stink. Consider the history of the KKK, for instance.
As to the preservation of “values, customs, and ways of life”, preservation is a technique needed mostly for rotting corpses. Living things, on the other hand, grow and progress.
Posted by: Andrei T. | May 25th, 2007 at 6:36 pm | Report this commentAndrei, what if muslim people will demand independence in 10-20 years when their population proportionally increases?? Like they can claim ‘In Bradford majority of population is muslims now white, we want independence and create our own country with sharia law. We want independence like Scotland’. It might not go as I say exactly, but something similar?? Muslims go to Europe for money, and then complain that europeans don’t respect their values when they don’t celebrate christman and want europeans to celebrate their holidays.
Posted by: Chen | May 26th, 2007 at 12:40 pm | Report this commentWhen chinese come to the UK, they don’t complain about hardships but work hard. When portugese came to France decades ago for a better life they worked hard not burn cars. Multi-culturism is good when people respect each others values. In Bradford muslims segregate themselves saying ‘Values of british people are bad, I don’t want my children to marry them or hang out with them’. The concern is this attitude, not their arrival to Europe on the first place.
Also, Europeans seem to loose their own values, when muslim world misunderstood Pope and showed their anger and hatred, european politicians were afraid to support him in public.
How lucky is the United States to have hispanics and chinese as immigrants, who love their country.
Europhobia, Islamophobia, and American Muslims Surveyed
The Atlantic Review has a new post on Eurabia alerting us to the fact that the American Freedom Alliance and Council for Democracy Tolerance is hosting a conference on the topic at Californias Pepperdine University. All the usual suspect…
Posted by: WSI Brussels Blog | May 26th, 2007 at 1:21 pm | Report this commentFirst: I think everybody who thinks that Europe will be overrun by the muslim hordes exaggerates the situation drastically.
Second: Even if you guys were right (notice the if), what should we do with the muslims? Round them up and put them into concentration camps? Sounds familiar?
Honestly Europe has survived the superstition that is Christianity and Europe will survive the superstition that is Islam. No need to become xenophobic.
Posted by: DCP | May 26th, 2007 at 2:45 pm | Report this commentMuslim domination of Europe is extremely unlikely. Having said that, the presence of large numbers of mostly conservative north African Muslims (The Turkish Muslims by and large are quite secular) does cause conflicts in the interpretation of history, in ethics and in defining the role of the state. Crusades, Holocaust, Israel, veil, headscarf, terror and the justification of terrorism, liberalism and freedom of expression, female subjugation; Europe has an immense educational task in explaining why on most if not all of these issues compromise is impossible. We’re not doing enough by far.
It’s strange that Mr. Steyn criticizes multiculturalism when that is the cure, in the US it is that very multiculturalism: that blend of multiple cultures under protection of constitutional freedoms plus social mobility that makes it such a dynamic country. Multiculturalism in Europe is a ‘dull opiate’ because in Europe there is no multiculturalism, many people are still very much entrenched in their socially immobile ethnic-religious insular comfort zones. We’re not doing enough because we don’t know how to invite the extremists away from their folly and give them a meaningful role in our type of society. It’s easy to critique Europe from the US when you don’t really understand Europe.
Meanwhile radicalism and the associated threat of violence is growing; giving in to the demands of the violent isn’t going to be a solution but something has to give.
Posted by: Felix Drost, Amsterdam NL | May 27th, 2007 at 11:44 pm | Report this commentDear Peter, your comments often contain hatred, and you make generalisations so that your posts represent one particular extremistic view.
Posted by: Chen | May 28th, 2007 at 12:52 pm | Report this commentThis part of the blog is about Islamisation, not jews in Europe or the USA.
Also, jews in US are hard working citizens, they don’t say ‘I don’t need american values’ unlike someo muslims in the UK who say ‘I don’t need british values’.