Demographic Jihad in Europe

The decline in the European birthrate has joined with the mass immigration of Muslims into Europe to produce a demographic time bomb. If present trends continue, the future of the EU is "Eurabia": a collection of welfare states in which an increasingly geriatric native European population is maintained in its comparative luxury by a Muslim underclass. France could have a Muslim majority before the end of this century.

The big question is: Will Europe go gentle into that good night? If the emerging Muslim communities obey certain niceties - stick to their neighborhoods, abuse their women only behind closed doors, practice terrorism in other countries only - perhaps their encroachment can be tolerated. France and Germany have in effect paid protection money to terrorists. In some cities in Scandinavia whole districts of large cities are effectively closed to non-Muslims; it is said that Muslims rule Malmø. If the water of jihad boils gradually enough, the European frog may not notice the heat of dhimmitude until it is too late.

If the Muslim communities in Europe remain quiescent, one can envision a future in which their numbers become large enough to influence political outcomes, with Islamic parties forming and joining coalitions with the left to introduce sharia slowly, in piecemeal fashion. By the time Europe's demographic decline reached its extremity, the component states of the EU would already be effectively Islamic.

But it seems unlikely that Islam in Europe will remain quiescent. The death of Theo Van Gogh seems a harbinger of what is to come. The reaction of the Dutch is a hopeful sign that Europe is waking up and throwing off the multicultural dream.

And in other parts of Europe, such as Italy, there are signs that the tide of extreme secularization is turning. If Europe were to recover some of the spiritual values and energy which gave birth to the glories of Western civilization, it may yet find the cultural nerve to stem the demographic jihad.

An optimistic, outward-looking, spiritually grounded culture may even produce a rise in the birthrate and stem the population crash in Old Europe. Stranger things have happened.