ViL: Eurabia?

Loads of scary articles in this week's Spectator following the French riots, this one by Mark Steyn on demographics possibly the most powerful:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=6901&page=1

He makes a point that's rarely discussed but seems indubitably true:

"Now go back to that bland statistic you hear a lot these days: ‘about 10 per cent of France’s population is Muslim’. Give or take a million here, a million there, that’s broadly correct, as far as it goes. But the population spread isn’t even. And when it comes to those living in France aged 20 and under, about 30 per cent are said to be Muslim and in the major urban centres about 45 per cent. If it came down to street-by-street fighting, as Michel Gurfinkiel, the editor of Valeurs Actuelles, points out, ‘the combatant ratio in any ethnic war may thus be one to one’ — already, right now, in 2005."

I've seen it said elsewhere that in the Netherlands currently two Muslim babies are born for every one non-Muslim.

What the above figures mean is that even if there were zero net Muslim immigration to France and the Muslim birth rate immediately fell to the general French level, and there was no net conversion to Islam, the French Muslim population would reach 30%. If the Muslim children currently born in the Netherlands reproduce only at the general Dutch level, the Dutch Muslim population will reach 66%.

In fact, Muslim men and women will likely continue to marry spouses from abroad and bring them back to Europe. Some level of Muslim migration into Europe will continue, though I think that may be at a relatively low level except when there's a media-worthy disturbance in a Muslim country like Iraq which makes asylum claims much easier. Non-Muslims will continue to convert to Islam, most commonly women converting to their husbands' religion (although the small number of male converts are a particularly disaffected and potentially dangerous group of people from marginal parts of society). There may be an increase in forced conversions of the kind that have occurred in south London, again these currently affect mostly marginal groups - the 'underclass' or 'vulnerable' groups, in London mostly poor West Indians.

Most importantly though is that on present trends it seems Muslim women are likely to continue to be undereducated and to have many more children on average than non-Muslims. The many young British Muslim women I teach tend to be bright and hard working, noteably more so than the small number of young British Muslim men. Back when I lived in Coventry too (a working class midlands city) when I did menial private-sector work it was noticeable that the young Muslim women in the junior managerial positions seemed much smarter & more competent than their non-Muslim peers , male & female - I don't recall seeing any Muslim men in such roles. Without official positive discrimination in the UK, with likely negative discrimination and with low expectations from their families, I think Muslim Asian women who want a career have had to be better than their contemporaries to get on.

At my University, the one group of Muslim women students who are not noticeably bright & hard working are those wrapped in burkas. There's generally a continuum - a south-Asian student wearing no religious clothes (who may be Hindu) prepares better and does better work than one in hijab headscarf, who in turn does better than one in full burka (no veils yet). It's not just a question of social class or what quality of school they went to, I've had burka wearers with posh accents and upper-middle-class demeanour, outraged that we had given them a low mark for a poor piece of work. But as with the male students, the more they make an ostentatious display of religiosity, the less work they seem prepared to do. This is almost the opposite of what one might expect from a Judaeo-Christian background, where "religious" and "hard working" are often synonymous, though I guess maybe Protestantism and orthodox Judaism maybe emphasise this more than Catholicism. I don't know if the religiosity dicourages hard work, or if lazier personalities are attracted to the religiosity because it can act as a shield against criticism ("Ramadan means I can't do 10am tutorials"). Either way, I do know that not working results in poor levels of achievement, helping create a vicious circle of resentment. Furthermore, the burkas and the male religious dress become much more common in every year upcoming, in my 3rd year class last year I think there was 1 burka and a couple hijab in 40 students; I recently saw a first year class (not mine) where they must have made up over 2/3 of all the students there. 5 years ago, most people thought Muslims were doing pretty well in British society, making a positive contribution. The Bradford riots in summer 2001 started the doubts, and the Muslim reaction to 9/11 started the fear. It still seems that the majority of Muslims in Britain are not radical Islamicist, but it is certainly a powerful political wave in Europe, and growing stronger. George Bush's policies have certainly helped encourage it, while being also stupid and counter-productive (eg: don't bother catching Osama, invade Iraq instead), a view which I suspect Steyn would not agree with.

I don't know what the future will bring - ethnic, political and religious conflicts tend to end, eventually, or at least go dormant - but I am not very hopeful. A sane and competent leader of the USA after 2008 would help. Nothing else looks amenable to easy solution. I hope there are no true mass-fatality attacks on London while I'm living here - none of the kind that kill thousands, anyway, and hopefully none at all. I hope there isn't an intifada here in London, and that if there is it at least stays up beyond Tooting Broadway and not in my immediate vicinity. I hope the police know what they're doing. But I doubt it.