Mark Steyn’s book
America Alone has been a New York Times best-seller, and a number 1 seller in Canada. Steyn is a well-known syndicated columnist. Many people accept the central thesis of this book. Many other best-selling books have made a similar argument, such as
While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer,
Londonistan by Melanie Philips, and
Eurabia by Bat Ye’or. What is
America Alone’s central thesis? Well, the book is called
America Alone, but in fact it is mostly about Europe.
According to Steyn “much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries”. In Europe “native populations are ageing and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. The EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035”. Europe’s population will before long be “very old or very Muslim”. Either way Western Europe is almost certainly doomed. Europe is in the middle of a “population death-spiral” that has in turn bred "civilizational exhaustion," leaving Europeans unprepared to fight for their ways. "Islam is now the principal supplier of new Europeans and Muslims are profoundly changing Europe. Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare. In 2005 European males aged 20-40 outnumbered Muslim males of a similar age by 18:1. By 2025 this ratio could drop to a mere 2:1”. Europeans are “too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia. The average European Muslim has 3.5 children, whereas the average native woman has 1.5. Europe's successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be. Europe is dying and America isn't”. Europe, says Steyn, is facing increasing violence from its Muslim population – such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands by a Muslim extremist. Europe could soon be run by Muslim fundamentalists and Islamicists.
So, that is a summary of Steyn’s argument. Scary stuff eh? No wonder the book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the US and Canada, and no wonder so many people are worried. Personally, I’m tempted to flee Europe right now this minute before the Muslim hordes take over the place.
Now, if Muslims are taking over Europe, we might reasonably ask, what proportion of the current population of the European Union is Muslim? Steyn never mentions this figure - a peculiar omission in a book which is about Muslims taking over Europe. So what proportion of Europeans are Muslim?
4%. Yes, that’s it: 4% maximum. 3% according to the CIA factbook. These 4% are going to take over the other 96%, according to Steyn. (The world as a whole, by the way, is about 24% Muslim. So Europe is a relatively Muslim-free corner of the world).
And what about this 4% figure anyway? It includes anyone who can possibly be considered a Muslim: secularised Muslims, moderate Muslims, traditional Muslims – as well as the hordes of swivel-eyed Jihadists galloping over the horizon to conquer Europe any second now. But surveys show time and again that a large majority of European Muslims do not want to live in a Muslim fundamentalist state. This is hardly surprising, since a majority of Muslims in the world also do not want to live in Muslim fundamentalist states – that’s why most Muslim fundamentalist states can only maintain their power by brutally oppressing the local Muslim population. Anyway,
how Islamicists intend to establish an oppressive Muslim caliphate in Europe against the opposition of a majority of Europeans and against a majority of European Muslims, has yet to be given a persuasive explanation by Mark Steyn. But that does not stop him predicting it will happen.
If anything, the endangered species in Europe is not the non-Muslim Europeans, but the continent's Muslim immigrants. Muslim Europeans are, on average, poorer than other Europeans, more unemployed, less educated, subjected to discrimination and marginalised from positions of power. Steyn insists that countries such as the Netherlands and France are being submerged under an avalanche of Muslim lawlessness. But Muslims in these countries are relatively peaceful.
The murder rate in America is 247% of what it is in France and 383% of what it is in the Netherlands. If you ask me, Americans like Steyn who are worried about violence should be fleeing their dangerous nation to go in live in peaceful countries like France and the Netherlands.
OK, I’m sure Steyn would concede that Europe is only 4% Muslim at the moment. But Steyn insists that Muslim Europeans are having more babies than non-Muslim Europeans. That 4% figure that he never mentions is going to grow, enabling Muslims eventually take over the continent. For example, the average Muslim in France, Steyn tells us, has 3 times as many children as the average non-Muslim French woman. He doesn’t tell us where he got this statistic. The fertility rate in France is 1.98 (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate ). So the average Muslim woman in France is having well over 5 babies, according to Steyn. Now, most Muslims in France come from Muslim countries in North Africa like Algeria and Tunisia. What are the fertility rates of these countries? Well the fertility rate in Algeria is 1.82. In Tunisia it is 1.73. In both cases, the
fertility rate is less than France. Now, unless the fertility rate of Muslims emigrating to France is suddenly shooting up by 300%, it cannot be the case that Muslims in France are having three times as many children as non-Muslim French. “Every Muslim woman in Western Europe is producing 3.5 children” Steyn instructs us. Like Germany for example? Most German Muslims come from Turkey. The fertility rate in Turkey is 2.14.
Question: Are Muslims in Germany suddenly having 3.5 babies each once they move to Germany or is Mark Steyn talking through his hole?
Answer: Mark Steyn is talking through his hole.
Is it the case that Europe is facing "demographic disaster"? The European Union, with its population of 450 million, is one of the most densely populated corners of the world. What about that low fertility rate? Actually, fertility rates are falling everywhere, including in the Muslim world. Steyn warns that fertility rates in Europe are below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Well, a list of non-European countries where fertility rates are below the replacement rate includes – China, Japan, Australia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Burma, Lebanon, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan (and also American non-Hispanic whites by the way). All these countries have fertility rates below the replacement level. Almost everywhere else, fertility rates are falling fast – thankfully, given that the world is overpopulated. In general,
the more wealthy and urbanised a country is, the lower its fertility rate is. The reason Europe has relatively low fertility rates is because it is wealthy and urbanised. For example, the countries in the world with the lowest fertility rates are Hong Kong and Singapore. Is Steyn worried about their future? If he is then he doesn’t even mention them. He just drones on endlessly about Europe. In any event, demographic predictions are notoriously inaccurate. Basing policies on dubious demographic extrapolations has been a favourite technique of sophists and cranks since at least the time of Malthus. To do so now, at a time when technological developments and increased mobility could alter populations in unforeseeable ways, is particularly feeble.
Final Question: is Mark Steyn a scaremongering fool indulging in Islamophobic fantasies in order to try and scare Europeans into accepting the anti-Muslim neocon foreign policies that he favours?
Answer: yes he is.
