Misleading breeding stats are the new skull-measurement

[imomus]

There are few things more annoying than that breed of American right-winger who tells us -- at every opportunity -- that Europe is about to become a Muslim state. It's a meme circulated in right wing circles in Europe too -- in the idea of Eurabia, for instance, or in the book Londonistan by right wing pundit Melanie Phillips. These people have in common that they take Europe's current state of ethnic and religious pluralism and project it into a future where it becomes, suddenly, its opposite. Where one group -- the Muslims -- takes over, turning diversity into monoculture: a European muslim superstate. There's only one problem. The figures just don't add up.

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This argument is based on demographic statistics. "They" are breeding faster than "us", or immigrating and failing to integrate with "our" values, and therefore becoming a "state within a state". (Odd that Americans, who built their 20th-century pre-eminence on immigration, are so reluctant to see it happen elsewhere.) But -- as the BBC's statistics programme More or Less valuably showed this weekend -- the statistics used to create a sense of panic about Europe's racial and religious diversity are simply wrong. Here's the BBC's fact check on the Muslim Demographics video above:

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The really puzzling thing, for me, is how an argument so much posited on the fact of there being a "stark choice" between conflicting systems ends up taking so many of its cues from "the enemy". The blurb for the Muslim Demographics video, for instance, says "Islam will overwhelm Christendom unless Christians recognize the demographic realities, begin reproducing again, and share the gospel with Muslims." The message is that we must live as they live, otherwise we will be forced to live as they live.

A similar "let's copy the Muslims" philosophy comes through in the documentary Jesus Camp. Here's the trailer:

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Again, it's basically "let's be like them before they rise up and force us to be like them". The "them" is a reductive stereotype. As one of the trainers in the Jesus Camp doc puts it: "Where should we put our focus? I'll tell you where our enemies are putting it. They're putting it on the kids. You go to Palestine and they're taking their kids to camps like we take our kids to Bible camps and they're putting hand grenades in their hands." A few seconds later we're seeing teachers in a Bible camp asking children: "How many want to be those who would give up their lives for Jesus?" A child's voice says "We're being trained to be those who'd be God's army." Hey, let's avoid falling under the yoke of Islamist terrorists by becoming something even worse!



The theory behind the Eurabia argument is as wrong as the statistics it's based on, and the praxis is illogical -- be like them so that we don't have to be like them. As a European who adores the strong and healthy Muslim presence here in Europe (and who even married, at one point, into a Muslim family), I'd like to advise these American right-wingers to cultiver their own jardin. You know, that superstate built on immigration and the idea that, wherever you came from, you're an American when you get to America. It's the same here: whoever is in Europe is a European by definition.

Resisting the Eurabians will be difficult, but ultimately I am optimistic. Sure, the Muslim Demographics video has had over ten million YouTube views and the BBC correction has had -- at the time of writing -- only 40. But growth rates on the BBC video are healthy. It is reproducing strongly. I believe that by 2050 the BBC vid will overtake and overwhelm the viewership -- and ethos -- of the Muslim Demographics film and rule it with a fist of iron. Well, a calculator of stainless steel, anyway.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And yet surely the BBC vid is premised on the same fear. Only it's saying: "relax, it's not going to happen." Personally, I couldn't care less if Europe becomes predominantly Muslim. It might be a very good thing for both Europe and Islam.

[(Anonymous)]

Stop screening!

[(Anonymous)]

I never knew people in the US cared about Europe turning into a Muslim state. Honestly, I've never once heard it talked about in the media in America, and I'm a news junkie.

I've only ever read about this in British and German papers, honestly. Not sure why you're pinning this one on the US ... if I were to make fun of any country for really, really caring about this subject to an absurd degree, I'd give it to England.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's true that the BBC vid doesn't take the step you and I do, and say "So what if this happens?" But I think you have to read quite a bit between the lines to say that their correction of the stats contains the implication that it would be bad if it did. I think they probably believe in "healthy diversity" and "pluralism", which is official EU and even UK policy.

[(Anonymous)]

Tolerant Guardian readers will find yourself in 'The Flying Inn' world at best. Muslims kills politicians in Netherlands and bombs tube in London, but you just close your eyes - it's not the proper theme to discuss.
But nobody in Europe likes such neighbours.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's off now. The ILX and KGB invasions are hopefully over.

Yesterday's DDoS attacks -- which made it impossible for me to access Click Opera for most of the day -- were reported (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351329,00.asp) to be initiated by the Russian secret services to block just one Georgian nationalist from celebrating the anniversary of Georgian independence from Russia. They duly ended at exactly midnight, Moscow time, following the day of that anniversary. All they achieved was to make this man and his cause world famous.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, Click Opera has regular commenters, based in the US, who promote these views, though they're otherwise jolly decent chaps.

I did, though, also cite Melanie Phillips, the columnist for UK papers The Daily Mail and The Guardian, and her book Londonistan.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Here we go, you see. This Click Opera reader is using a Chicago ISP and thinks it's a jolly pressing danger for us Europeans. And you thought it couldn't happen here!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Muslims kills politicians in Netherlands

Are you referring to Pim Fortuyn? You do realise he was killed by an animal rights activist, don't you, and not a muslim? If you add together the numbers of animal rights activists and add them to the number of animals in Europe and then factor in the breeding rates of rabbits, it's clear that we will be ruled by rodents within a few decades.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Fortuyn was shot by animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf (http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-08-05.asp), "thought to have been upset by Fortuyn's statements supporting fur farming."

But, you know, blame it on muslims, why dontcha?

A muslim of which nationality?

[(Anonymous)]

You adore Muslims? Surely you could be a little more specific. In Berlin - I lived there for quite a while - I had Turkish friends and had reason to say 'these Muslims are a misrepresented bunch' at one or another time, but since moving to the south of France, where there are far fewer Turks and many more north Africans, I've been disappointed by the behaviour of Muslims in the street and worry about it frankly. I know Marseille well, Lyon too, and more than these two, Paris. Who do you think has had more success in integrating Muslim immigrants? The Germans, right? But only because they admitted Turks? I was interested to read some time ago in your blog that in Berlin, Turks and North Africans do not get along well.

Re: A muslim of which nationality?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, I've lived in three European cities with very different muslim populations. In London I liked the Bangladeshis enough to marry one. In Paris I gravitated more to the Vietnamese quarter and had occasional street aggro problems with the Algerians and Moroccans. In Berlin I've found the Turkish areas of the city by far the most pleasant, and become almost "patriotic" about Neukolln's Turkish culture. Yes, some gang violence happened a couple of years ago between Turks and North Africans in Neukolln schools. It's my understanding that that's now simmered down.

But I take your point that broad-brush generalisations -- seeing a religious-cultural bloc that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia as a single entity -- are fairly foolish.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

I don't know how big National Review is in the US, but I'm led to believe it's the hub around that kind of thought.

Ironically, Mark Steyn, the leading Eurabia bullshitter, for all his "America...Fuck Yeah!" attitudes, is actually Canadian.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Mark Steyn! Wasn't he on trial in Toronto recently for hate speech? What was the outcome of that? Shall now google.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

OK, the trial happened in BC and Steyn was eventually acquitted.

[bongo-kong.livejournal.com]

I think he might have been getting confused with this case

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_(film_director)

or this related case

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali

Lord knows what will happen if whoever killed Jill Dando turns out to be Muslim. The Daily Mail will go berserk.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

DANDO KILLER WAS CHRISTIAN, HETEROSEXUAL!
Questions raised in House about Christians, heterosexuals.

[(Anonymous)]

i wonder if Melanie Philips had some kind of road to damascus style revelation at some point. As far as I remember when she wrote for the Guardian, she was perfectly in tune with the (1980s?) Guardian agenda, then recently, suddenly she appeared all over various media sounding like someone she might well have despised in the 1980s.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly care what genetics make up the British population in the future, but I do care about the social values and political climate.

You can't really embrace Islamic values on one hand and reject far-right values on the other because the one thing these two views share in common is ultra-conservatism. Britain is a liberal, secular democracy, and as a gay man I personally wouldn't want to see Britain ruled as an Islamic state or under a far-right government. I'd say my main problem with the hypothetical significant Islamic population in Britain is the possibility of that population growing, gaining power, and making laws based on Islamic values. Oh no! Am I a racist for saying that? I'd even go as far as to say I'd rather Britain wasn't the home to Muslims who hold conservative, prejudice views, just like I'd rather Britain didn't have conservative Christians or neo-nazis.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The stats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country) say that less than 3% of the UK population is muslim. (Compare that with around 30% of the population of the particular borough of Berlin I live in.) A 3% population taking over the institutions of the UK (unless we're talking about Oxbridge graduates) is such a remote possibility it shouldn't even be on the table. It's clearly been put there by right-wingers desperate to stir people up to fear and xenophobia for their own purposes, and prepared to lie about the stats to do it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, it's been known to happen in the UK media, hasn't it? The papers on the right have more money and bigger circulations. Phillips still writes for The Guardian, presumably to provide some pro-Israeli ballast from time to time.

Actually, I started thinking about her yesterday when watching an old VHS tape from my stash, a discussion about film censorship from 1993. She was already, by that point, on the right, pushing a "ban the video nasties" line and staring in withering contempt at the bearded libertarian across the table. As far as she was concerned, science had proved that watching violence makes you more violent.

She's married to Joshua Rozenberg, who used to be the BBC's law correspondent but now writes for the Daily Telegraph, so has also presumably drifted right.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There's a fascinating history to be written by someone about the exact moment when the people who were students in 1968 became conservatives, and why. I personally think the period of 1988 to 1992 saw the flip, due to a combination of the PC thing and the fall of communism. And perhaps also just sheer exhaustion fighting Thatcher-Reagan, and the desire to make money and get on. New Labour began to happen at around the same time. And, with communism gone, it was conservative Islam that took the full force (and God, was it force!) of the neo-liberals' "humanitarian interventions". Because conservative Islam is conservative, these 68ers could continue to think of themselves as, in some vague way, "liberals" (military invasions in the name of women's rights, and so on).

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Ah, the joy of religious nutjobs. I figure a good chunk of the Eurabia nonsense emanates from the neurotic Washington chattering classes, who have a pathological need[*] for a shadowy oppositional superpower to measure their realpolitik machismo against; since the Soviets imploded they've been desperate to find a replacement, and Europe would fit the bill, if they could just somehow replace the fuzzy, boring EU with some kind of hostile ideological threat.

Meanwhile, have you run across the Quiverfull movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull)?

Putting two and two together, I perceive a faint whiff of projection ...


[*] "Pathological" insofar as the set-up is used to justify gigantic military spending and the odd invasion of some punk country, pour encourager les autres.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I know this is all scaremongering, what I was referring to was this:

"...the BBC vid doesn't take the step you and I do, and say "So what if this happens?"

Would you really embrace a large population of people into your country who didn't share your values? I don't get how people can say "If the far-right gained power it would be terrible, but Muslims values dominating is fine."

If Muslims became a majority and it started to affect Britain's social climate and our laws I wouldn't like it, just like if the BNP were to ever gain power.

I'm tolerant of intolerance within the wider framework of a mostly liberal, tolerant, secular society. I would never embrace a predominantly conservative society, whether it was Christian or Muslim, and I don't understand how you can say you would.

[(Anonymous)]

We've come a long way already but in 50 years from now Europe will most likely be secular anyway.