'Oh No! The Muslims Are Coming!'

Tuesday, 18 August 2009 14:35

Alex Massie in The Spectator Blogs comments on recent stories fuelling Eurabia enthusiasts’ apocalyptic vision of an ‘Islamized’ Europe. The ‘evidence’ used to feed their fantasies? Well, there’s European Muslim birth rates, which are not only exaggerated by Eurabia-mongers, but wrongly cited. Accuracy not being the Eurabia-mongers' strong point.

Then there’s the prevalence of Muslim parents naming their boys Muhammad. A weak indicator against which to set such a startling prediction you might say. Not, Massie argues, if your ‘Eurabia’ fantasy is fed by an overactive Islamophobic imagination and not hard facts.

Massie writes:

‘Sure as eggs is eggs, you can count on some folk being terribly exercised each time it is "revealed" that lots of boys named Mohammed, or some variation of the prophet's name, are being born in Europe. This time it's the revelation that in four Dutch cities Mohammed is the most popular name for boys. Oh no! The Muslims are coming! Never mind that Mohammed is only the 16th most popular boys name in Holland as a whole, better by far to raise the spectre of an Islamic "takeover" of Dutch cities.

‘Did you know, for instance, that Mohammed was already the second most popular boys' name in Britain? Clearly the Caliphate is on the march! Except, of course, that Muslims are much more likely to name their sons Mohammed than Christians are to call their sons any single name. …In other words, unless you're wanting to stoke panic and resentment what kids are called is not a terribly useful metric.

‘Of course, we're also encouraged to believe that European civilisation is threatened by millions of splendidly fertile Muslim women breeding for Mohammed. You can't "buck" demographics don't you know and soon Muslims will be a plurality of the EU population and some states will "fall" within fifty years, becoming Muslim-majority enterprises.

‘All this from a base of 3% of the EU population at the moment! [and] despite the fact that in many European countries Muslim fertility rates are, not surprisingly, declining.

‘It's also striking, mind you, how many people desperately want to believe in the idea of a Muslim reconquista sweeping away European elites …Sometimes one gets the impression that the Dhimmi-watchers would actually welcome a religious confrontation and continent-wide conflagration.’

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