Europe's future - Umma or Bloodshed?

Daniel Pipes gave a speech recently in Australia for Quadrant magazine. In it he discussed the future of Europe.

As regular readers know, my view is that Europe is either going to become part of the Umma or once again going to be the scene of massive bloodshed as nationalist movements act to reassert themselves.

THE future of Europe is in play. Will it turn into "Eurabia", a part of the Muslim world? Will it remain the distinct cultural unit it has been for the past millennium? Or might there be some creative synthesis of the two?

The answer has vast importance. Europe may constitute a mere 7 per cent of the world's landmass but for 500 years, 1450-1950, for good and ill, it was the global engine of change.

How it develops in the future will affect all humanity, especially daughter countries such as Australia that still retain close and important ties to the old continent. I foresee potentially one of three paths for Europe: Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration.

* Muslim domination strikes some analysts as inevitable. Oriana Fallaci found that "Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam". Mark Steyn argues that much of the Western world "will not survive the 21st century and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries".

Such authors point to three factors leading to Europe's Islamisation: faith, demography and a sense of heritage.

It's not just these people who are pointing to these three factors; it's Muslim leaders themselves that are point blank telling us that it's their goal to have Europe become a Muslim continent.

The secularism that predominates in Europe, especially among its elites, leads to alienation from the Judeo-Christian tradition, empty church pews and a fascination with Islam. In complete contrast, Muslims display a religious fervour that translates into jihadi sensibility, a supremacism towards non-Muslims and an expectation that Europe is waiting for conversion to Islam.

European secularism is a huge problem, as I've written about before. In Europe, the rejection of religion has included the rejection of the Judeo-Christian values that underpinned the rise of Europe into the world's leader for so many centuries. Oriana Fallaci coined the term 'Christian Atheist', which she applied to herself, for someone that did not believe in god but adhered to Judeo-Christian values. This is the term that I use to describe myself, much to the confusion of my god-fearing friends for whom the belief in god and the values go hand in hand.

The contrast in faith also has demographic implications, with Christians having on average 1.4 children a woman, or about one-third less than the number needed to maintain their population, and Muslims enjoying a dramatically higher, if falling, fertility rate. Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in about 2015, are expected to be the first large majority-Muslim cities.

So I'll make a prediction. These cities will become the crime capitals of the Western world. They will have huge numbers of people dependent on the state, they will vote in politicians who will feed that dependency and the crime rate will soar due to a surplus of young, unemployed males with no job prospects.

Russia could become a Muslim-majority country in 2050. To employ enough workers to fund existing pension plans, Europe needs millions of immigrants, and these tend to be disproportionately Muslim due to reasons of proximity, colonial ties and the turmoil in majority-Muslim countries.

In addition, many Europeans no longer cherish their history, mores and customs. Guilt about fascism, racism and imperialism leaves many with a sense that their own culture has less value than that of immigrants.

Congratulations to the Political Correctness (aka Cultural Marxism) crowd and their supporters in universities, the media and the political left for their success in bringing Europe to its cultural knees. The Frankfurt School and its proponents of Critical Theory would be proud. The gotcha for them is that instead of ending up with a socialised Europe they're going to end up with a Muslim Europe.

Such self-disdain has direct implications for Muslim immigrants, for if Europeans shun their own ways, why should immigrants adopt them? When added to the existing Muslim hesitations over much that is Western, especially concerns about sexuality, the result is Muslim populations who strongly resist assimilation.

The logic of this first path leads to Europe ultimately becoming an extension of North Africa.

Quite correct. One can't beat bad values with no values.

* But the first path is not inevitable. Indigenous Europeans could resist it and, as they make up 95per cent of the continent's population, they can at any time reassert control should they see Muslims posing a threat to a valued way of life.

This impulse can be seen at work in the French anti-hijab legislation or in Geert Wilders's film, Fitna. Anti-immigrant parties gain in strength; a potential nativist movement is taking shape across Europe as political parties opposed to immigration focus increasingly on Islam and Muslims. These parties include the British National Party, Belgium's Vlaamse Belang, France's National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Party for Freedom in The Netherlands and the Danish People's Party.

This is another point I have been making and is the reason that I have Britain and Germany ahead of the rest as the next nations to have fascist governments. The rise of national socialist governments in response to those countries' problems - which will be blamed on immigrants rather than the real culprit of left wing policies - seems inevitable.

They are likely to continue to grow as immigration surges ever higher, with mainstream parties paying and expropriating their anti-Islamic message. Should nationalist parties gain power, they will reject multiculturalism, cut back on immigration, encourage repatriation of immigrants, support Christian institutions, increase indigenous European birthrates and broadly attempt to re-establish traditional ways.

I'm not too sure that nationalist movements will embrace Christian institutions. Otherwise I agree with Pipes.

Muslim alarm is likely to follow. US author Ralph Peters sketches a scenario in which "US Navy ships are at anchor and US marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's Muslims".

Which would be hugely ironic, really. However, the United States is the only country in the world that is prepared to send its soldiers into harm's way in order to protect those that can't protect themselves so the idea is not that far-fetched.

Peters concludes that because of Europeans' "ineradicable viciousness", the continent's Muslims "are living on borrowed time". As Europeans have "perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing", Muslims, he predicts, "will be lucky just to be deported" rather than being killed.

Indeed, Muslims worry about just such a fate; since the 1980s they have spoken overtly about Muslims being sent to gas chambers. European violence cannot be precluded, but nationalist efforts will more likely take place less violently; if anyone is likely to initiate violence, it is the Muslims.

They have already engaged in many acts of violence and seem to be spoiling for more. Surveys indicate, for instance, that about 5 per cent of British Muslims endorse the 7/7 transport bombings. In brief, a European reassertion will likely lead to ongoing civil strife, perhaps a more lethal version of the 2005 riots in France.

I wonder whether the majority of Muslims now living in Europe understand what will happen to them should the native population go Berserker. I doubt it.

* The ideal outcome has indigenous Europeans and immigrant Muslims finding a way to live together harmoniously and create a new synthesis. A 1991 study, La France, une chance pour l'Islam (France, an Opportunity for Islam), by Jeanne-Helene Kaltenbach and Pierre Patrick Kaltenbach, promoted this idealistic approach. Despite all, this optimism remains the conventional wisdom, as suggested by an Economist leader in 2006 that dismissed, for the moment at least, the prospect of Eurabia as scaremongering. This is the view of most politicians, journalists, and academics, but it has little basis in fact.

These people are mainly of the left hand side of politics so facts are simply an inconvenience.

Yes, indigenous Europeans could yet rediscover their Christian faith, make more babies and again cherish their heritage. Yes, they could encourage non-Muslim immigration and acculturate Muslims already living in Europe. Yes, Muslim could accept historic Europe. But not only are such developments not under way, their prospects are dim. In particular, young Muslims are cultivating grievances and nursing ambitions at odds with their neighbours.

One can virtually dismiss from consideration the prospect of Muslims accepting historic Europe and integrating within it. American columnist Dennis Prager agrees: "It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for western Europe than its becoming Islamicised or having a civil war." But which of those two remaining paths will the continent take?

Forecasting is difficult because the crisis has not yet struck. But it may not be far off. Within a decade, perhaps, the continent's evolution will become clear as the Europe-Muslim relationship takes shape.

The unprecedented nature of Europe's situation also renders a forecast exceedingly difficult. Never in history has a civilisation peaceably dissolved, nor has a people risen to reclaim its patrimony. Europe's unique circumstances make the outcome difficult to comprehend, tempting to overlook and virtually impossible to predict. With Europe, we all enter into terra incognita.

I disagree. I believe that we enter into the terra cognita of two outcomes - Umma or Bloodshed.

(Nothing Follows)