Note that the late Ms. Sontag once did apologize for that remark, but only to the cancerous.
This is probably as good a time as any to say that most Moslems in Europe today are not nuts. Anecdotally, I offer into evidence an achingly beautiful Turkish girl named Lale whom I met and chatted with once in Schiphol Airport, just south of Amsterdam, in 1999. Lale was Turkish only by parentage. She spoke German primarily and very little Turkish. She'd been a model for German magazines. She was dating or engaged to a German (I misremember which) and intended to be a German.
I don't think Lale was all that atypical. Many, perhaps even most, Moslems in Europe might like to become Europeans, insiders rather than outsiders, given the chance. It's not clear they are, or will be, given that chance.
But is Europe, qua Europe, going under? It's a very good question.
As of this writing (11 September, 2007) Brussels is the capital of the European Union. Brussels is ruled by the Socialist Party. Of the eighteen members of the Brussels City Council who are in that ruling Socialist Party block, ten are apparently Muslim. Does this prove Brussels is majority Muslim? No, not at all. If Muslims made up a majority this little tidbit wouldn't be so interesting. Rather, it shows that something considerably less than a majority is required to rule a political entity.
As Brussels, the capital of the EU, goes, so goes . . .
Well, we don't know.
Leaving aside a couple of fringe stands, there are basically four theories on the future of Europe. These are:
1. Differentials in birthrates condemn Europe to a) a Muslim majority and b) non-Muslim Europeans to second class citizen status and barbarism, more or less soon. This is Mark Steyn's position for a), and absolutely the position of the Koran, the Sunna, and the Hadiths for b).
2. The Europeans are nuts. However weak they may seem now, before they go under they'll go fascist, if not outright Nazi. The Moslems are heading for the ghettoes and the gas chambers, not rule over the Continent. I think this is, more or less, Ralph Peters' position.
3. Europe will become majority Muslim, but it will be okay so long as we've treated them well while we were the majority. This is basically the progressive position.
4. Problem? What problem? So long as I get my five weeks paid vacation yearly, guaranteed job security, universal health care, etc.—all of which are my right because I am in the position to rob the future for them—there is no problem. Let the future care for the future; I got mine. This appears to be the basic European citizen's position, with some not inconsequential dissent. (Note: for some of the dissenters, check the obituaries.)
So who's right? I don't know. Nobody does. All we can do is calculate the odds, while noting that 4 is the refutation of 2 and 1 is the refutation of 3.
Question One: if Euro and Muslim birth rates don't change, will Europe become Muslim majority?
Answer: Clearly, at some point in time, if we leave aside the question of Muslims assimilating to European culture. Let's try some rough figures. Assume, not unreasonably, that culturally European birth rates continue to hover around a low of 1.6 children per woman (it's actually quite a bit lower in some places), and that these women will have their children later in life, giving three generations in a century. (Remember, those are rough figures.)
What that means, over a century, is that 100 Europeans, half of them female, will have 76 children, that those children will have about 61 children, and that those 61 will have about 49 children.
Let's look at the other side. Assume 4.2 children per Muslim woman and four generations in a century, since they marry younger and have children younger. (Again, "rough," I said.)
Ten Muslims, half female, will have 21 children, who will have 44 children, who will have 92 children, who will around the end of that century have about 193 children.
From this point on, if nothing else changes, we're only arguing about the timing. When two populations have that much disparity in birthrates, and if that disparity doesn't change, and if the death rate of the second population doesn't change (the Peters gas chamber hypothesis), and if the assimilation rate (which will affect birthrate) doesn't change, then population B will at some point in time overtake population A.
There's an amazing amount of intellectual dishonesty floating about on the subject, most (maybe not all) of it on the progressive side. Yes, yes, some of that is just idiocy and some of it is the very human phenomenon of accepting without criticism that which we desperately want to believe. ("Communism's just never been done right!")
Example: in the book Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, Canadian authors Nadeau and Barlow claim that half of immigrant men in France marry non-immigrant women, and that one-quarter of immigrant women marry non-immigrant men, for a total intermarriage rate of roughly 40%. (I'm indebted to world famous literary critic, Randy McDonald, for this little tidbit.)
End of problem, right? The Muslims of France, and Europe, will assimilate and all will be well, right?
Wrong. What Nadeau and Barteau did there (and what some seem desperately not to want to see that they did there) is an insupportable bit of sleight of hand. You see, the word "non-immigrant" does not mean culturally French, or assimilated, as they want you to simply assume. The word non-immigrant simply means born in France.
But what if those people born in France do not consider themselves French, have been unofficially ghettoized in a banlieue, have no loyalty to France, despise French culture, and loathe French liberalism and secularism? What if the immigrant, marrying a non- immigrant, is an Arab marrying another Arab in the banlieues? What if the non-immigrant, marrying the immigrant, is an unassimilated Arab, marrying his first or second cousin imported from Algeria for the purpose? What if the non-immigrant has done this several times, importing and marrying a girl, then divorcing her under French civil law and remarrying another import, while leaving the French welfare system (no great shakes perhaps, lifestyle-wise, but inarguably better than a poor village in Algeria) to pay to bring up his children who are legitimate under Islamic law?
Is that what's happening in France? It's not just hard to say, definitively; it's impossible. Why? It's impossible because the French go out of their way not to permit much in the way of such statistics to be gathered. They have some sound reasons for this; it isn't, or isn't entirely, that many of them wish to lull the people into that long cultural goodnight. (Though Sontag had her French adherents, as well . . . and likely still has. "The Left: getting rid of societal cancer one baby at a time.")
Yet there are some indicators we can look to, some questions we can ask. What are the odds of a culturally Arab girl, living in the banlieues outside Paris, controlled by her family from morn to night, not speaking French comfortably, burka-clad and veiled, and herself brought up in an unquestioning faith in the superiority of arranged marriage . . . what are the odds she meets and marries a culturally French, non-Muslim man? Perhaps by the romantic light of the burning Peugeots?
Yeah, pull the other one. Just because the French government has good reasons not to permit the collection of some important statistics doesn't also mean that there are not people trying to make up nonsense statistics to console or delude the French (and other Europeans) as they head into that long cultural goodnight. Why should they do this? Oh, perhaps they, as Susan Sontag did, simply feel that moral people will try to eliminate cancer where possible.