For an up to date (April 2012) view on the figures in a talk entitled 'Religion & Babies' by Hans Rosling at a TED convention in Quatar click here

January 2008

This article, asserting that Europe will shortly no-longer be recognisable because of the number of Muslims who will live here, was forwarded on to me for comment. My comments come at the end.

2007 The Rape of Europe, By Paul Belien The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper "De Volkskrant" (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin , Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: "We are watching the world of yesterday." Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. "I am too old," he said. However, he urged young people to get out and "move to Australia or New Zealand . That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable." Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder's advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics. The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years . By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today Mohammed is already the most popular name for new-born boys in Brussels , Amsterdam, Rotterdam , and other major European cities. Broder is convinced that the Europeans are not willing to oppose islamization. "The dominant ethos ," he told De Volkskrant, "is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting . She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death." In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared "humanist") author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder's interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him coping with the islamization of Europe is like "a process of mourning." He is overwhelmed by a "feeling of sadness." "I am not a warrior," he says, "but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." As Tom Bethell wrote in this month's American Spectator: "Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working." But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to "enjoy" freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist. "If faith collapses, civilization goes with it," says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means "submission" and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it. Some of the people I meet in the U.S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit. This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European "islamophobes" who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission ( Islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission - just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead.

A quick browse on the internet shows Mr Belien to have anti-muslim, anti-abortion views and is a strong supporter of the movement for independence for the Flemish population of Belgium. In view of the fact that the state of Belgium (as he puts it) ‘cannot guarantee the safety of its citizens’ (what state can?), he considers that they should all be able to carry weapons in order to defend themselves.

He is the Director of an American based project called Islamist Watch, an off-shoot of an American think-tank called the Middle East Forum. He has anti-abortion, so-called ‘pro-life’, views which explains in part, perhaps, why the article is phrased as it is - i.e. designed to appeal to the American evangelical right-wing.

However, to the detail:

Clearly Mr Belien is not naive in his use of language. For instance:

The title of the piece - the Rape of Europe - is intended to evoke a response of outrage, even though it has nothing to do with demographics.

He continues to push the right buttons for his intended audience with descriptions of those who don’t agree with him variously as feminists, humanists, ‘stupid blonde woman author’, secularists and finally a reference to secularists as former closet communists - ‘better red than dead’.

He refers to the translation of Islam as meaning ‘submission’ although it in fact means 'submission to God’, a concept entirely familiar to and accepted by Christians.

In connection with his chosen sub-theme of rape, he asserts that death or serious injury is better than dishonour, a view which I do not think any of us would dream of suggesting to our wives. He goes further and incorrectly summarises what the ‘German feminist’ said as ‘they prefer to be raped rather than resist’. It is an irony, of course that many traditional Muslims would agree with him. Hence the Sharia law idea that a woman who has been raped should be stoned to death for having engaged in immoral sexual activity. I can only assume that Mr Belien also considers a choice of dishonour rather than death or serious injury to be immoral. All I can say is that I wholly disagree with him.

He then quotes approvingly the view of a Mr Tom Bethell, a member of the religious right, and fervent anti-evolutionist, that ‘If faith collapses, civilisation goes with it’. I am struggling to see how the largely secular but very civilised states which go to make up the European Union and exist in various other parts of the world are in a state of collapse. I do though see states, whose citizens are very religious and where the institutions reflect that, which are in a very poor way indeed. I also see India, most of whose citizens are very religious, making considerable progress. In other words, I cannot see any actual correlation between faith, secularisation and the collapse of civilisations. No evidence is brought forward to support this idea. Neither is his concept of ‘civilisation’ defined, although I suspect that it would be rather different to mine, as it would clearly involve religious people, i.e. the Christian right wing, having immense influence over government, something which I also presume he would object to if the Christian right wing were to be replaced with Islam.

He refers to concern amongst Americans about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Presumably this is not something which is happening in the USA. Ironically, however, the whole content of the article is blatantly anti-Islamist and there is in it a clear reflection of the Nazi propaganda which tried to characterise the Jews as a people who bred like rats and were trying to take over from the good Aryan people, something which ultimately resulted in the programs which encouraged the Aryans to try to out-breed them. I mention this, because I would like now to ‘just consider the demographics’ as we are invited to do.

The latest figures I can find for the population of Europe and the number of Muslims within it are for 2003 and are from a combination of official sources, including the obviously pro-Islamist USA State department and the ‘CIA fact book’ (yes there is one and it has its own web-site), that well known socialist magazine, the Economist and various national governments. The BBC has also produced a set of graphics summarising this information. The figures are as follows:

Total number of people in the 15 countries of the EU plus
Norway, Iceland and Switzerland 390 million

of which total number of Muslims 16 million

If we add in Greece, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, and the significantly Muslim countries of Albania, Bosnia Hercegovina, Macedonia and Serbia Montenegro, but presumably not Turkey, the figures change to these:

Grand total of European population 462 million

of which Muslims grand total 21 Million

Even allowing for under-estimation of the numbers of Muslims in ‘modern Europe’ - let us say there are 25 million - there is rather a big difference between that figure and the 50 million claimed by Mr Belien. And no, the 4 years in between doesn’t explain it if you do the arithmetic, and Mr Belien would not claim that either, because he goes on to say that Muslims will reproduce at a rate such that their number will have doubled in twenty years - by 2027. On his figures they will number 100 million. On the figures given above, they will be 50 million.

Even if we assume that the rest of the population sees no net increase in numbers during the next 20 years, then in the year 2027, there will be 462 million people in these 27 countries of which 50 million will be muslims i.e. 412 million will be non-muslims.

The article then says that by 2025 (let us assume that this is 2027 for the sake of simplicity), one third of all children born will be born to Muslim families. It is rather difficult to see how this is arrived at, as I have been able to find no figures to substantiate such a claim. However if you do the arithmetic, then this means that muslims will be reproducing at 2.74 times the rate of non-muslims. I arrive at this as follows:

Let rate of reproduction for muslim couples be Rm and let rate of reproduction for non-muslim couples be Rn-m, then:

50 million x Rm x 3 = 412 million x Rn-m

Thus

Rm 412
----- = --------- = 2.74
Rn-m 50 x 3

Thus if non-muslims are reproducing at the rate of 2 children per couple, then muslims will reproduce at the rate of 5.49 children per couple (2 x 2.74). There can be no proof that this will be so, as it is a twenty year projection and we all know that projections for even a few years are notoriously unreliable. It is, of course, possible, that such rates will be commonplace in twenty years time, but, I would suggest, very unlikely, granted that wherever women become educated, have access to birth control measures - and so are better able to take their destinies into their own hands - birth rates tend to go down.

It may also be worth noting for instance that in Iran, that most muslim of muslim countries the birth rate is currently at 1.71 children per couple i.e there is a shrinking population - something in excess of 2 children per couple is required merely to maintain a population at its current level. In Albania, where about 70% of the population is Muslim, the rate is a little higher at 2.03, but it is still a marginally shrinking population. Which takes us back to Turkey, the country which I am sure Mr Belien would not want to count as being part of modern Europe. Why do I say this? Well, for a start, it is a predominantly Muslim country and secondly, it has so many Muslims that even Mr Belien’s estimate of 50 million muslims in Europe would be swamped if Turkey had featured in his consciousness. The population of Turkey is 71 million people, of whom 80% - 56 million - are Muslims. And so how are they plotting to take over the world? Well it’s not by having lots of children. They have only 1.89 children per couple.

I could do a line by line analysis, but hope that the above is sufficient to demonstrate that Mr Belien’s argument falls apart when subjected to closer scrutiny - something which is not unusual for an extremist rant such as I am sure you recognised this to be. Indeed, Mr Belien has only convinced me that he and Osama Bin-Laden are not far apart in their distortion of language and their use of religion to promote hatred rather than love or peace.