Muslim Takeover of Europe – NOT 

At my local library, I picked up Walter Laqueur’s book “The Last Days of Europe” (2007) subtitled “Epitaph for an Old Continent”.  There are many such books, even movies, about a Muslim takeover of Europe.  “Londonistan” (2006) by UK author Melanie Phillips is another example.

In Laqueur’s book, European robbery rates are compared to American rates and are stated as being higher.  In 2007, he admitted that America has a higher homicide rate. This is true today, also. Today, robbery rates in the US are higher than in all but a handful of EU countries.  Also, he does not show that such crime rates in 2007 were due to Muslim criminality.

However, his main point is the fertility rate for Muslims in comparison with non-Muslims.  In 2007, in France, and elsewhere in Europe, fertility rates of the former were twice that of the latter.  In the past 17 years, these have been reduced from 2 to 1 to a ratio of 1.4 to 1.  The following chart shows past, current, and 2050 projected populations of Muslims in Europe.  The three 2050 numbers (the three right-hand columns) are based on zero, medium, and high migration rates.  Even the highest, showing 463 million non-Muslims and 76 million Muslims, means that Muslims will comprise only 16% of the European population in 2050.  By comparison, Hispanics today are 19% of the US population and Blacks 14%.  Separately or combined, they are not taking over.  The US is still a white-male-dominated society.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/869755/projected-muslim-population-europe/    This Statista chart is based on a Pew research paper from 2017, written 10 years after Laqueur’s book, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/12/04/europes-muslim-population-will-continue-to-grow-but-how-much-depends-on-migration/   The estimates for Europe are for the 27 members of the EU plus the UK, Norway, and Switzerland.

In 2024, there are European small towns and suburbs which are 30% or 40% Muslim or more. There will be more of these in the next decade or two and some larger cities will become 30% or 40% Muslim.  However, rural and remote regions will have few Muslims residing there. Certainly, a political or economic takeover of Europe by Muslims, in the unlikely event it happens, will not be before 2100.

Just as a point of interest, I did find a study which had this as a summary:

“Findings

Among three scenarios, the most likely mid-point migration scenario identifies 13 countries where the Muslim population will be the majority between the years 2085 and 2215: Cyprus (in the year 2085), Sweden (2125), France (2135), Greece (2135), Belgium (2140), Bulgaria (2140), Italy (2175), Luxembourg (2175), the UK (2180), Slovenia (2190), Switzerland (2195), Ireland (2200) and Lithuania (2215). The 17 remaining countries will never reach a majority in the next 200 years.”

These putative Muslim majorities are so far in the future as to be wildly unpredictable.  So much can happen even in the closest date scenario (2085), i.e., 60 years in the future.  Climate catastrophes, wars, economic depressions, artificial intelligence outcomes, pandemics, fertility changes, and many more unknown, even unknowable, factors could come into play.  These results are interesting, but in the year 2024, they are meaningless.

The bigger problem that Laqueur does not deal with is the concept of uniformity of Muslim opinion in the future.  Laqueur acknowledges that UK Pakistani Muslims, French North African Muslims, and German Turkish Muslims do not have a common language and have considerable cultural differences. However, Laqueur and many of those in fear of Muslim dominance see a “European Muslim bloc” about to overwhelm non-Muslims. Muslims are not a monolithic bloc, and in terms of their commonality, i.e., Islam, many of the second and third generations are not observant Muslims.   

The idea that Muslims think with unanimity is, frankly, a racist one.  It is similar to the anti-Semite who states “all Jews are capitalist” or “all Jews are communists” (sometimes at the same time).  It is hard to project what the majority of the 4th and 5th generations of those from immigrant families will believe.  A small minority will cling to their religion, and a small subset of them to radical Islamist versions..  Very few will speak the language of their immigrant ancestors or have a connection to their ancestors’ country of origin.  

Lacquer and others issuing such warnings whip up fear over the issue of Muslim dominance of Europe, but it will not happen in this century, if ever.