Word: europeanizer
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...world mercifully distant from Cambridge, an obsession with demography has taken hold: Religious conservatives are hysterically decrying the “creeping Islamization of Europe.” In right-wing magazines like the National Review, theological conservatives (theocons) foretell the end of European civilization due to the continentals’ obstinate refusal to breed. “Demography is destiny,” they chant, and dwindling Christian Europe is about to be engulfed by Mohammedans...
...even if demography were destiny, Sharia-law Europe, simply put, is not going to happen. Although many Muslims are migrating to Europe, they amount to just four percent of the population, and there’s no reason to believe that most European Muslims would support anything resembling Sharia law. In the most dramatic projections, the number of Muslims in Europe will only rise to roughly 20 percent by 2050, which hardly amounts to a takeover...
Implicitly or explicitly, the demographic “problem” depends on a link between contemporary Europe’s virtues and its Christian demography. The very idea of pan-European values is questionable, but assuming that they exist—perhaps as embodied by a commitment to political, social and economic freedom achieved through liberal democracy and capitalism—it’s unclear how such “European values” will be endangered by an Islamic minority. In a mostly non-religious Europe, the only link between the continent’s values...
Last year’s French riots, continually cited by theocons as a warning sign of the coming religious wars, actually highlight how class is the main cause of European social strife. The rioters were not exclusively Muslim; they were, however, (almost) exclusively poor and mostly unemployed. The riots weren’t sparked by a religious issue, but by resentment of discrimination and endemic unemploymente—the rioters wore blue jeans, not Wahhabi robes...
...support theocons’ pessimism and fear. Although they love to decry the softness of modern Europe—accusing it of lacking “civilizational confidence”—theocons deny the vitality of Western culture by assuming that Muslims are impervious to the European values (temptations?). Such self-doubt is unjustified: European values (decadent capitalism and post-Enlightenment liberalism) are likely to persist, no matter how demographic changes alter Europeans’ creed or color...