BERLIN — The headlines would suggest Europe is under siege: Thousands of Germans march against the continent’s “Islamization.” French readers flock to read a novel about a Muslim president who imposes Sharia law on their country. Commentators warn darkly about
BERLIN — The headlines would suggest Europe is under siege: Thousands of Germans march against the continent’s “Islamization.” French readers flock to read a novel about a Muslim president who imposes Sharia law on their country. Commentators warn darkly about an encroaching age of “Eurabia” in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.
But is Europe actually heading toward Islamization?
Research shows that Europe’s Islamic population has indeed risen sharply over the last two decades, and continues to grow. But the numbers fall far short of any possibility of Europe becoming predominantly Muslim. And there are little signs that Islamic culture is spreading beyond the boundaries of Muslim communities — let alone becoming dominant in Europe.
The Pew Forum published research in 2011 predicting that Europe’s Muslim population will almost double to nearly 57 million by 2030, from just under 30 million in 1990. That may seem like a lot, but it still means that Europe’s Muslim population would only increase from 4.1 percent to 7.8 percent, according to the Pew paper. Moreover, the Pew report says that the period of greatest growth in Islamic populations is already past.
“As Muslims become more integrated, they tend to have fewer children,” said Brian J. Grim, president of the Religious Freedom &Business Foundation, who worked on the Pew report. “Based on the demographic data, Europe cannot be Islamized, if by that is meant demographic dominance.”
If population trends don’t point toward Islamization, could there be a cultural change with the same result? In London, Paris, Berlin and other major European cities, anti-Muslim sentiment is frequently directed against the growth of mosques, halal butchers and Islamic dress in the streets — with many seeing them as infringements on European norms.
Following major Islamist terror attacks in London and Paris, anxieties are soaring in Europe about the rapid growth of a culture that, its critics say, simply refuses to adopt the values of the host country. Ordinary people across Europe are increasingly wary of the insular-looking Islamic communities that have cropped up in major European cities, and feel that its members are hostile to the European mainstream.
A stream of news stories about homegrown Islamic youths traveling to Syria to wage jihad with Islamic State has tended to put the entire Muslim community under a pall of suspicion. Meanwhile, the attack in Paris on a Jewish supermarket following the murder spree against cartoonists at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo has caused many Jews to consider fleeing Europe and moving to Israel.
Kathrin Oertel, one of the founders of the group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA, and one of the key figures behind the rallies in the German state of Saxony, says Muslims are eroding German cultural identity.
“In Europe, there are some countries where Islamization has gone so far that it affects the culture and life there,” said Oertel, who has since left PEGIDA to form her own group.
Mainstream conservative politicians, too, have responded angrily to news reports of Muslims refusing to assimilate. Often, they center on Muslim parents who refuse to let daughters take part in co-ed swimming lessons, or Muslim students insisting that a prayer room be available at a university that already has a chapel.
Still, the January terror attacks in Paris have revived the idea of dangerous “no-go areas” for non-Muslims in European cities. Fox News came under international ridicule when a commentator said that non-Muslims don’t go into the British city of Birmingham.
The city of Paris filed a lawsuit against the American network in February over claims by a different commentator that there are parts of the French capital where non-Muslims can’t tread. Fox has apologized, saying its guest had made an error during a program exploring the reasons for the Paris terror strikes.
It is true that Paris areas such as Grande Borne — a predominantly Muslim housing project — are considered so dangerous that police prefer to operate there in groups of 10 or more.
However, the danger they face is not from Islamists but from drug dealers. Police union representative Claude Carillo says the pushers deploy school dropouts as young as 12 as lookouts and enforce what he calls “the diktat of the delinquents.”
