With the rapid growth of Muslim populations in Europe, Muslim demographics represents a topic that is on everyone's mind. From the rising radicalism of UK Muslims to the car burnings that shook Paris to the riots in Brussels and the growing acceptance that some form of Sharia law will be integrated into the legal systems of individual European nations-- not just the size, but the projected size of Muslim populations is behind attitudes toward Muslims.
To many on the left, Muslim populations represent the fall of colonialism and the rise of true multicultural societies. To many on the right they represent a threat and the mark of a skull and crossbones across the map of Western Europe. To many middle of the road politicians, who may identify one way or another, the Muslims populations are inevitable and must be accommodated. Such politicians may dislike the social and criminal problems produced by Muslim growth, but see no way out but to accept it and make the best of it. That is why seemingly confrontational politicians like Sarkozy in France or Lieberman in Israel may talk a good game, but while their rhetoric roars like a lion, their actual policies squeak like a mouse.
This form of Dhimmism is one one of the more disturbing side effects of Muslim population growth, as politicians thinking themselves farsighted, resign themselves to the inevitable. And this of course makes Muslim populations one of the best political weapons in the hands of Muslim leaders, who make it clear that they are the future and that nothing short of genocide can change that.
The reality however is far more complicated. For one thing Muslims are well aware that their strength lines in numbers, not in much of anything else, and that it is to their advantage to exaggerate those numbers as much as possible. When Arafat said that the womb of the Palestinian woman was his best weapon, he was projecting the same basic ultimatum that Muslims would deliver time and time again to the non-Muslim nations that played host to them, "We'll outnumber you soon enough, and unless you're prepared to kill us all, you had better be ready to make a deal with us."
But the perception of a weapon is as important as the reality of a weapon. Israel began a series of panicked policies, that included the Gaza Disengagement, as a response to perceived Muslim demographic superiority. That perception however was wrong. In fact Arab Muslim births were leveling off, and Jewish births were catching up.
Similarly European leaders have accepted being outnumbered by Muslims, having Islam dominate Europe and having Sharia become the law of the land based on a false premise. There are two reasons for the higher Muslim birthrate, the first is religious or ideological, the second however is economic. It is not so much that Muslims have a high birthrate, as that Europeans have come to have a low birthrate.
Socialism has created the bear trap that Europe now finds itself in, by levying heavy taxation to support a social services infrastructure that makes raising large families economically difficult, and using that same social services infrastructure to fund the large families of Muslim immigrants, imported to compensate for that same low birth rate and the accompanying shrinking tax base.
Socialism created the problem of Muslim demographics, both in Europe and Israel, where Arab Muslim families benefit from special payments made to large families and Israel's extensive health care system. The same situation is taking place in the United States, though focused more on immigrants from Latin America.
Boosting European birth rates, reducing taxation, ending open door social services for foreigners and drastically curtailing immigration would reverse the Muslim demographic threat.
Yet even when underfunded by Europe's social services system, it is not clear how many generations Muslim birth rates could sustain themselves. High birth rates are a reasonable product of a rural system where children are assets. Child labor laws and high educational barriers in workplaces curtail those same benefits in urban areas. Sustaining a large Muslim birth rate in Europe therefore requires constantly importing a fresh supply of first generation immigrants, a process that Europe can now curtail.
In the Muslim world, high birth rates are set to cause social and economic crashes of their own. Since Muslim countries have few real exports besides oil, they have a limited ability to sustain large populations. Those Muslim countries which do have a strong domestic oil industry tend to produce the fewest "immigrants of expansion", as opposed to political and religious refugees. Those Muslim countries without any significant domestic oil industry are driving much of the immigration to Europe. Countries like Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Lebanon dump their surplus populations into Europe, America and Australia. They don't want them, and neither do we.
Immigration serves as a safety valve, dumping radicals and shiftless young men into European societies that they quickly come to despise. If that valve was suddenly turned off, half the Muslim countries would collapse or reform. Possibly a little of both. Immigration however turns their religious and social problems into our problems, and eventually our destruction. Meanwhile the perception of an unstoppable rising Muslim population tide panics politicians and causes them to throw up their hands in surrender, before they've even seriously addressed the problem.
Boosting European birth rates, reducing taxation, ending open door social services for foreigners and drastically curtailing immigration would reverse the Muslim demographic threat. We are not truly helpless, we are only being made to feel that way. There are solutions and answers that can end the helplessness and the shadow of the demographic threat.
