Islam

The future doesn’t belong to Islam, thank you very much

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Mark Steyn is, as so often in the last years, claiming yet again that the future belongs to Islam.

Point is, demographics aren’t quite as decisive as they used to be, and large, uneducted masses are mostly a danger to themselves nowadays. Not to mention the fact that there only are 15 million Muslims in all of Europe and that their birthrates also aren’t all that high in several countries. German Muslims have a birthrate below replacement level, at about 1.8 babies per woman, and it is rapidly declining even further. The danger of substantial Muslim immigration also is very slim. Our expulsion policies towards Third World immigrants already are inhumane in their draconian harshness, and they are only going to get harsher over time. ‘Our’ Muslims also aren’t a monolithic mass. Especially in Germany we have a lot of Alevites, whom ‘mainstream’ Muslims consider heretics. There is no way that the Alevites make common cause with the more conventional Muslims whom they in return see as a threat to themselves.

As to age structure: The relative proportion of young people is higher than in the ‘native’ populations, but in absolute terms the ‘native’ still have hands down more young people of fighting age, as well as the weapons and all the other stuff that is needed to keep the barbarians at bay. And we will do that, and more, once we feel seriously threatened. Most Europeans so far simply don’t, and there is no concrete danger you could point to, except in some French and Belgian cities. And the Muslim ‘youths’ wouldn’t last more than 10 minutes if they ever tried that crap on French farmers, rather than the urban types, so those specific problems will stay localized.

Mark Steyn is a smart fellow, but when he goes on and on about demographics he is reminding me of the statisticians who claimed in the 1850s that by 1910 the streets of New York would be covered with four feet of horse manure. They couldn’t have foreseen the motorcar. Steyn’s arguments aren’t quite like that, more like that of one of those statisticians who’d refuse to change his opinion even after the invention of the motorcar. He simply isn’t thinking outside of the box. Demographics isn’t what it used to be, the more populous country or ethic group doesn’t win automatically anymore, not for decades in fact. Such a large population would have to invest a lot of time and money into the education and training of its young, and as it happens Islam does exactly the opposite. If there ever are serious conflicts betwen ‘native’ Europeans and Muslim immigrants, the Muslims won’t have a chance.

Symposium on the Pope’s Regensberg Speech at U of C on 11.01.06

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I received the following today:

The Lumen Christi Institute presents a symposium at the University of Chicago on Benedict XVI on “Faith, Reason and the University”: The Regensburg Address in Context, with remarks by Hans Joas, University of Chicago, Michael Kremer, University of Chicago, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Northwestern University, Paul Griffiths, University of Illinois, Chicago. Wed., Nov. 1, 2006, 4:00-6:00 PM, Room 101, Hinds Lab. for Geophysical Sciences, 5734 South Ellis Avenue. For more information and the revised text of the Pope’s address (with footnotes), see the notice at www.lumenchristi.org.

We have had some discussion of this speech and its meaning and impact on the blog. If you are able to get to Hyde Park for this symposium, I am sure that it will be good, as all Lumen Christi events always are.

Incidentally, I think the best thing I have seen about the speech was this piece by Lee Harris.

Lepanto: 435

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Today is the memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, formerly celebrated as Our Lady of Victory, which the Catholic Church celebrates to commemorate the victory of the Christian fleet over the Turks at Lepanto, October 7, 1571. This was the first major victory of the West against the Muslims at sea, a military, political and cultural milestone of great importance. Prior to that day, the onrush of the Ottomans had seemed unstoppable. The Turks were not similarly checked on land until 1683, at Vienna. Prior to the battle, Pope St. Pius V asked the faithful to pray the rosary for what appeared to be an unlikely victory, and the victory was attributed to her intercession. The Turkish galleys were propelled by Christian captives taken and held as slaves.

G.K. Chesterton wrote a very stirring poem about the battle.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

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Tatyana photographs the sidewalk display and storefront of some Muslim missionaries in Brooklyn and gets accosted by the Muslims, who try to intimidate her and call the cops. Instead of telling the Muslims that public photography is legal, the cops defer to them and tell Tatyana to stop stirring up trouble. The Muslims file a harrassment complaint against Tatyana and she files one against them. Tatyana notes that if the missionary follows through on his threat to sue her he will be able to find out where she lives, and notes the implied threat.

It sounds like Tatyana could use some good legal advice. Perhaps some of our readers in NYC could provide suggestions?

We weren’t there, of course, but from Tatyana’s description it almost sounds like the NYC police are following a policy of appeasing Muslims to avoid trouble. But of course the cops wouldn’t do that, would they?

Background:

First encounter with the Muslim missionaries.

Second encounter and aftermath.

UPDATE: I am closing comments on this post. My intent here was to provide some modest publicity for what strikes me as troubling behavior on the part of NY police, and also to provide a venue for constructive suggestions for Tatyana. I am not interested in providing a forum for second-guessing. I think it should go without saying that you should be able to photograph people on a NYC sidewalk without someone screaming at you or calling the cops.

This would ordinarily be a minor case for anyone who wasn’t involved. However, we are no longer living in ordinary times. One of the first thoughts I had when I read Tatyana’s posts was that this is the kind of event that happens in Europe, and the NY police officers acted as one might expect French or Dutch police to act. By placating the difficult parties they reward and therefore encourage bad behavior. I think it’s important that this kind of mindless, “we don’t want any trouble” response by government functionaries not become the norm in the USA.

Minor Aside

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Update: Modern news makes thoughtful discussion difficult; the nature of the media is that reporters do what any sensible human being would not: chop up the Pope’s speech in such a way that drama would abound, a nun would be murdered & churches burned. Those who committed these atrocities are at fault – not the reporters. But the reporters do make any discussion on the level Lex suggets difficult in any public forum. If the press had intelligence & moral levels that came anywhere close to their levels of self-righteousness, real discussions might be more common. Noting all this, the network of 24-hour Anna Nicole Smith did put up a discussion that brings a certain clarity to the discussion of Benedict’s depth.

Second Update: Instapundit links to this piece by the Anchoress (on Pajamas Media) that argues the Pope is, indeed, the person to confront Islamic beliefs. Since the positions Islamists take are religious, they should be, she argues, dealt with in terns if a religious dialogue. Certainly, the validity of forced conversion is the province of the religious and not the secular.