Selected and edited from the Inroads listserv by Bob Chodos

On August 23, Ricardo Duchesne touched off a debate on the Inroads listserv by posting an article by Adrian Michaels, foreign editor of London’s Daily Telegraph, entitled “ Muslim Europe: The Demographic Time Bomb Transforming Our Continent,” with the comment, “The experiment to make Europe a multicultural society carried out by socialist-liberal elites is about to come to fruition in Europe; when looked at from a long term perspective this article’s assessment may hardly be seen as alarmist.”

Michaels began with the observation that “Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.”

He noted that “ Europe’s low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society.” It is not immigration as such that is at issue, but its pace and origin: “Migrants have come increasingly from outside developed economies, and they have come in accelerating numbers.” For Michaels, “The growing Muslim population is of particular interest,” because “Muslims represent a particular set of issues beyond the fact that atrocities have been committed in the West in the name of Islam.”

Michaels quoted the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life as saying, “These [European Union] countries possess deep historical, cultural, religious and linguistic traditions. Injecting hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of people who look, speak and act differently into these settings often makes for a difficult social fit.”

While noting that figures on Muslim immigration to Europe as such are hard to come by, Michaels cited a variety of statistics: “ Europe’s Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys’ names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.” He also quoted a recent EU report to the effect that since 2002 overall net migration into the EU “has roughly tripled to between 1.6 million and two million people per year.”

He noted the concentration of Muslims in particular areas: “According to the US’s Migration Policy Institute, residents of Muslim faith will account for more than 20 per cent of the EU population by 2050 but already do so in a number of cities. Whites will be in a minority in Birmingham by 2026, says Christopher Caldwell, an American journalist, and even sooner in Leicester.”

Increased immigration has had a significant impact on projections for Europe’s population as a whole: “In 2004 the EU thought its population would decline by 16 million by 2050. Now it thinks it will increase by 10 million by 2060.”

While concern about immigration shows up frequently in polls, “politicians largely avoid debate.” The result has been the rise of far-right political parties such as the British National Party. According to the Pew Forum, scholars “have argued that European elites have yet to fully grapple with the broader issues of race and identity surrounding Muslims and other groups for fear of being seen as politically incorrect.”

Responses from other listserv participants were not slow in coming.

From: Garth Stevenson | August 24

I rarely comment on the newspaper articles that people post onto this list. However, the latest article posted by Ricardo Duchesne inspires me to make a few observations:

First, the author of the article seems to use the terms Muslim, immigrant and non-white more or less interchangeably, which is seriously misleading. Arabs, Turks and Iranians belong to the “white” (Caucasian) race, as anyone who has met one must surely be aware. And of course only a minority of the non-whites on the planet are Muslims.

Second, Ricardo refers to “the experiment to make Europe a multicultural society.” I am not aware of any such experiment on the part of the EU. Of course Europe has always been a multicultural society, since it includes French, Germans, Italians and so forth. As for making individual European countries multicultural, this may be happening as a result of immigration but not all of that immigration is from other continents. Remember that there is much immigration from one European country to another, since EU citizens have mobility rights within the EU, and this also contributes to cultural diversity. For example, there has been a large Polish minority in Ireland since Poland was admitted to the EU.

Third, net immigration into the EU of 1.6 million or even 2 million per annum may sound like a lot, but relative to the size of the existing population these rates are lower than Canada’s rate of immigration in recent years.

Fourth, the fact that Europe’s population is growing is good news. Only environmental nut cases think zero population growth is desirable. Look at Japan, which is stagnating because it has both a very low birth rate and practically no immigration.

Fifth, immigration will do Europe no harm, just as it does North America no harm. It will make the continent younger, more dynamic, and more interesting.

Garth Stevenson is Professor of Political Science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

From: Ricardo Duchesne | August 24

I will respond to Garth point by point. He writes that “Arabs, Turks and Iranians belong to the ‘white’ (Caucasian) race, as anyone who has met one must surely be aware. And of course only a minority of the non-whites on the planet are Muslims.” Race is a non-issue in this article, which is about Muslims and the ability of European cultures to assimilate a growing population of people with a very different (and rather energetic) set of values.

As for Europe always having been a multicultural society, this is again not the issue; these are all Europeans with a common “Western” history, more or less.

On the question of Europe’s immigration rate, it is not about total numbers. In this sense the article I sent is moderate in its use of numbers; there are major cities in Europe which are soon to have a majority of Muslims. The question is not when Europe becomes 50.1 per cent Muslim: Islam will already be a formidable force once it grows to over 20 per cent of the population, and it need not be 20 per cent in the country at large.

How about these numbers collected by the “Islam in Europe” blog site on the growing Muslim population in European cities:

Marseille – 25 per cent (200,000 of 800,000)

Malmö – ~25 per cent (67,000 of 270,000)

Amsterdam – 24 per cent (180,000 of 750,000)

Stockholm – 20 per cent (>155,000 of 771,038)

Brussels – ~20 per cent (some say 33 per cent)

Moscow – 16 per cent–20 per cent (2 million of 10–12 million)

London – 17 per cent (1.3 million of 7.5 million)

Luton – 14.6 per cent (26,963)

Birmingham – 14.3 per cent (139,771)

The Hague – 14.2 per cent (67,896 of 475,580)

Utrecht – 13.2 per cent (38,300 of 289,000)

Rotterdam – 13 per cent (80,000 of 600,000)

Copenhagen – 12.6 per cent (63,000 of 500,000)

Leicester – 11 per cent (>30,000 of 280,000)

Aarhus – ~10 per cent

Zaan district ( Netherlands) – 8.8 per cent

Paris – 7.38 per cent (155,000 of 2.1 million)

Antwerp – 6.7 per cent (>30,000 of >450,000)

Hamburg – 6.4 per cent (>110,000 of 1.73 million)

Berlin – 5.9 per cent (~200,000 of 3.40 million)

According to Garth, Europe’s population growth should be welcomed, no matter where it comes from. The rational secularists of Europe do not reproduce themselves; the fertility rate of Europe averages 1.4, which is below replacement level. (A fertility rate of 1.3 halves a population within just 32 years). Is Garth’s answer that Europeans should bring Muslims to fill in the fertility gap? Tariq Ramadan has said, with a sneer in his face, that Europeans need Muslims to ensure their demographic survival and economic wellbeing, and that Muslims are therefore an essential part of Europe’s culture; hence, like it or not, Europe must accept its new name: “Euro-Islam.”

The amazing thing is that the left welcomes this new name as a liberating future state that will take us away from the “ethnocentric” norms of the West. This is the argument Richard Bulliet makes in The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization .1 Westerners themselves are seeking to redefine Europe’s historical identity by arguing (falsely) that Islam played a “profound” role in its formation: see Peter O’Brien’s European Perceptions of Islam and America from Saladin to George W. Bush: Europe’s Fragile Ego Uncovered. 2

In terms of Garth’s contention that immigration will make Europe “younger, more dynamic, and more interesting” – yes indeed; the younger, more vibrant people will be Muslims, with a European population retired from life.

I am doubtful of the claim that “diversity” bridges ethnic communities. The liberal Robert Putnam hoped to come up with a different result, consistent with his multi values, but in the end he could not hide the results, which were, as he said in an interview, that “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.”

And he added, “A wide array of measures of social capital and civic engagement are also negatively correlated with ethnic diversity. In areas of greater diversity, our respondents demonstrate: (i) less likelihood of working on a community project, (ii) lower likelihood of giving to charity or volunteering, (iii) fewer close friends and confidants, (iv) less happiness, (v) more time spent watching television and more agreement that ‘television is my most important form of entertainment.’”

Finally, how interesting is a Western world in which each nation is equally diverse with no identifiable cultural groups, but a mush of hybrids driving hybrid cars? I have no illusions: the real contenders for world power, the Asians, are not about to endorse multiculturalism. The Han ethnic majority in China will remain as dominant as they are now with over 90 per cent dominance. The one-party Communists in China are Darwinian capitalists who happen to be rather interested in the genetics of a superior Han race; see Frank Dikötter’s The Discourse of Race in Modern China. 3

Ricardo Duchesne is Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John.

From: Garth Stevenson | August 25

Race may not be an issue for Ricardo, but the article which he cites approvingly uses the word white at least twice, once referring to the low birth rate of “white” Europeans and once referring to the percentage of “whites” in two British cities. In any event, it seems to me that Ricardo disapproves of Muslims, as do most of the writers whom he has cited on the list. People who stir up fear and hatred of Muslims today remind me of Europeans who stirred up fear and hatred of Jews in the first half of the twentieth century, and of people in North America and England who stirred up fear and hatred of Irish Catholics in the nineteenth century. I could even mention people like Robert Sellar, who worried that the movement of French-speaking Catholics into the Eastern Townships of Quebec a century ago was a plot by the Vatican. Muslim immigrants today, like Jewish or Irish immigrants in the past, and like French Canadians who left their farms to work in factories, are seeking a better life for themselves and their children. The movement of people from one place to another can be easily explained without recourse to conspiracy theories and it has been going on since the dawn of history. Muslims, if they are made to feel welcome, will fit into the societies that receive them just as Jews and Catholics did in the past, and if they want to worship God in their own way, that is no one’s business but their own.

From: Ricardo Duchesne | August 25

I do not disapprove of Muslims and I do not disapprove of the right of individuals to their religious beliefs. I disapprove of individuals who think that the mass immigration of Muslims into Europe is a non-issue that should be accepted without questions. Garth says that the movement of people has been going on since ancient times and that it has never been a problem. I guess he has never heard about ethnic wars, border wars and civil wars. I would like to ask Garth in what ways Muslims have not been made to feel welcome into Europe through the last three decades. Why does he think there has been a growing reaction by normal Europeans against the multicultural policies he thinks should be extended even more to make them feel more welcome? I am sorry, but it is Garth’s response which works to stir up fear against anyone who wishes to have an open debate on this question. Should we be smeared the way the leftist David Goodhart was because he provoked liberals to reevaluate their views on diversity and the welfare state in his article “Discomfort of Strangers”?

From: Henry Milner | August 26

Ricardo has recently kickstarted the listserv after a quiet summer. While some may disagree, I consider his inviting a discussion of Islam in Europe worthwhile, indeed essential. Moreover, I think Garth is wrong to try to sweep the issue under the carpet with superficial historical analogies. One aspect of such superficial analogies is the simple analogy of Europe with a settler society like the United States.

Henry Milner is co-publisher of Inroads.

From: Garth Stevenson | August 26

Henry Milner makes an interesting distinction, although it is one that I disagree with. Henry suggests that immigration to a “settler society” like the USA (and presumably Canada) is fundamentally different from immigration to a European country.

Of course what he says was true in the days when North America had a huge surplus of agricultural land, which a settler could acquire very cheaply or sometimes at no financial cost at all. Such a settler could farm his land without having much contact, if any, with the people who had arrived a generation or two earlier than himself. They in turn were hardly aware of the new settler’s existence. But those days ended in the USA in about 1890 and in Canada in about 1930. Today most immigrants to North America, like immigrants to Europe, settle in the cities. Under modern conditions, I fail to see that immigration to Montreal or Toronto or New York is fundamentally different from immigration to Paris or London or Berlin.

Henry may respond that since most North Americans are descended from immigrants, they can be expected to react to immigration differently from Europeans. But I don’t think this follows. Knowing that my great-grandparents were born in Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Nova Scotia (the latter was a separate colony at the time) really has little direct impact on my everyday life or attitudes, if only because all the people in question died before I was born. And most people born on this continent have, I suspect, much less knowledge about their ancestors than I have about mine.

Furthermore, I included 19th-century England, as well as North America, in the historical analogy that Henry objects to. English people in the middle decades of the 19th century reacted to Irish Catholics much as Europeans today react to Muslims. Cartoons in English (as well as American) periodicals depicted the Irish with baboon-like faces. Their religion (Catholic) was feared and despised, and was alleged to be incompatible with the English (or American) form of government. They were also alleged to be violent, disorderly and unclean, and of course they were said to have too many children. Sound familiar?

From: Bob Chodos | August 27

I have appreciated Garth Stevenson’s humane and reasonable voice in the debate on Muslim immigration on Europe. But I do wonder about the question of whether the immigration in Europe is comparable to that in North America.

I’ve been reading a book by David McWilliams, an Irish journalist and perceptive if glib observer of contemporary Ireland (The Generation Game, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2007). Immigration is one of the subjects McWilliams writes about: Ireland has gone from being a country with virtually no immigrants to one with a 10 per cent foreign-born population in an astonishingly short time. As Garth notes, most of the immigrants have come from within the European Union, especially Poland and Lithuania. McWilliams thinks Irish policymakers are being shortsighted about the effects of this development. “Given that Ireland struggled for independence in order to create self-rule for the Irish,” he writes, “the State’s foundation is ethnocentric. It is our place and it is highly unlikely and vaguely implausible to think that Ireland will suddenly enshrine in our constitution an objective to become a cosmopolitan honeypot.”

That’s a specifically Irish observation and we all know Ireland is special – the same observation could not necessarily be applied to Britain, France or Germany. But in a way that’s the point. When it comes to the impact of immigration, history and social context matter.

Bob Chodos is managing editor of Inroads.

From: Ian Malcolm | August 28

I think Henry’s right that there’s a difference between immigration to North America (I’ve lived in Canada and the U.S.) and to a European country (I live in the U.K.). And I don’t think Ireland is a special case. Most of the challenges Ireland faces are faced elsewhere.

Few European countries have had the sort of immigration, legal and illegal, that they are currently facing. They’re not culturally or structurally prepared for it. Should they try to be? I’m not sure. I think they should do a better job of integrating immigrants, but I don’t think they should overhaul their cultures to try to become settler societies like Canada, the U.S. and Australia. And I don’t think elites should ignore the fact that mass immigration is extremely unpopular and that Islamic immigration is particularly problematic culturally, politically and socially, assume that opposition to mass immigration is morally wrong, or conclude that native people ought to be educated to become indifferent to an unpopular transformation of society.

I don’t say all this for the same reasons as Ricardo. I do like European traditions and cultures and don’t think dismantling them to appease collective guilt and assertive Islam is sensible or justifiable (so far, so Ricardo). But if you also like societies that have characteristics that Ricardo doesn’t like – liberal, progressive, social democratic, open to feminism and closed to homophobia – and are low in crime, then it’s sensible to worry about the effects of immigration. (This is not to say that most Europeans have in fact achieved such societies.)

Ian Malcolm is Senior Publishing Editor (humanities) with the European office of Princeton University Press in Woodstock, England.

From: Ricardo Duchesne | August 28

I don’t quite understand why I give the flat impression that I don’t like societies that are liberal, progressive or even social democratic; or perhaps I should understand given the left’s proclivity to rely on words of opprobrium rather than historical analysis. I have said before that we are all liberals, social democrats and feminists. I believe in classical feminism as Camille Paglia defines it. Most conservatives and libertarians are not out to dismantle the public system.

The difference, I have come to realize, and it is rather obvious, is that I have become highly sceptical of “progressivist” politics – the idea that we should be in a continual state of dismantling the past, its norms and values, its history and its mythical figures. Women have achieved parity as far as Nature allows it. What you have now is an effort to dismantle the natural differences between the sexes. The fact that women are currently way ahead in bachelors’ degrees is testimony to the fact that males are now the second sex in education. The state already plays a big part in our lives; Obamanism is an effort to enlarge the powers of the state and undermine individual initiative and responsibility. The solution to a seemingly permanent black underclass lies in cultural changes; as Shelby Steele puts it: “changes in child-rearing, a restoration of marriage and family, a focus on academic rigor, a greater appreciation of entrepreneurship.” 4 Ted Kennedy’s ideas made sense in the sixties, as they were being implemented then. Ted himself was a product of a tougher world, a demanding father who pushed his sons. What Ted wanted was a softer world from which no strong characters like him can arise.

Robert A. Dahl once asked, “When does the revolution end?” He was thinking of rapid revolutionary changes, but in the last decades we have been in a state of permanent revolution, and the progressivists cannot get enough. Having dismantled many fine features of the older educational system, Dewey-style, away from disciplined subjects, they now want to reengineer “diverse” humans into generic types. Humans need epics. What we could do with is not a generation raised on “social studies,” but a generation well steeped in the history of the West; not the current social, economic, demographic and environmental histories which have neutralized the identity of the West, but a history that focuses on great events, heroes and prophets. You cannot be a progressivist and be for Europe. You must be a conservative. The Western tradition will die without a new generation in Europe; a new generation requires couples to have babies, and women and men will have babies only if they believe in families and traditions. One cannot believe in the future without a past.