Statistics are an interesting thing. Their absence can be even more interesting. Example: it's common knowledge that France has about the highest birthrate in Western Europe, something near replacement level, about 1.82 children per woman or perhaps a bit over. This is often touted as something approaching proof that there is no threat of an Islamic majority in France and, by extension, Europe.
Question Two (and here's some more kitchen math): if 10% of the women of a country are bearing 4.2 children each, and the total for all women in that country is 1.82, what does that mean the other 90% are bearing?
Answer: a bit over a kid and a half. See Question One, above, for what this means.
Then again, maybe they will assimilate, after all, and all those nominally Muslim births will become French, or Dutch, or Belgian, or—as with the setting for this book—German.
A couple of interesting anecdotes / tidbits:
From Expatica Magazine, 23 May, 2007
Wuppertal, Germany (dpa) - A 42-year-old man with ingrained traditional Turkish views was jailed for 54 months in Germany for the attempted manslaughter of his teenaged daughter after a row over family "honour."
The girl, 16, had been forced to marry and later rebelled. Witnesses described how her father lifted her over a fourth-storey balcony, with another family member prising apart her grip on the rail, and threw her down.
She survived the fall onto a garage roof. The family had accused the daughter of being "dishonourable" because she opposed her father's will, the court in the city of Wuppertal was told.
Passing judgement, a state court judge told the accused he lived in a "parallel world" dominated by Turkish concepts although he was the third generation of a family that had resettled in Germany. (The italics are mine. Fifty-four months for attempted murder? Oh, yeah, there's some protection from the law, for you.)
Or this one from that notorious neo-Nazi rag, Der Spiegel:
29 March, 2007
Paving the Way for a Muslim Parallel Society
But German law requires a one-year separation before a divorce can be completed—and exceptions for an expedited process are only granted in extreme situations. When the woman's attorney, Barbara Becker- Rojczyk, filed a petition for an expedited divorce, Judge Christa Datz- Winter suddenly became inflexible. According to the judge, there was no evidence of "an unreasonable hardship" that would make it necessary to dissolve the marriage immediately. Instead, the judge argued, the woman should have "expected" that her husband, who had grown up in a country influenced by Islamic tradition, would exercise the "right to use corporal punishment" his religion grants him.
The judge even went so far as to quote the Koran in the grounds for her decision. In Sura 4, verse 34, she wrote, the Koran contains "both the husband's right to use corporal punishment against a disobedient wife and the establishment of the husband's superiority over the wife."
So much for the lure of liberalism, or for the liberal society's ability to assimilate the immigrants. They're supposed to respect a law, or want to be a part of a society, like this?
A few bits of wisdom from those who see no problem, perhaps somewhat scathingly paraphrased:
1. "But immigrant reproductive rates will drop. They always do. They're dropping in the countries the Muslim immigrants come from even as we speak."
This one's partially true, but mostly just tempting. There are a number of factors that go into female reproductive rates. Of those, the biggest single correlation with that rate isn't poverty, or religion, or culture, but the educational status of the female. Muslim girls in Europe are typically somewhat educationally deprived, on average. Moreover, while the reproductive rate in, say, Algeria, may be dropping, there is never any explanation given for why it must then drop in France. Could there be other factors at work in Algeria than in France? It seems likely, especially since the rate does not seem to be dropping in France. Perhaps this is because France provides free health care of a much higher quality than can be found in Algeria, along with all the other entitlements of the modern social democratic welfare state.
It does no good to say, for example, that "the reproductive rate of Catholics in America dropped," without at least looking at why this happened, and at the religious and cultural differences between, say, Irish or Italian or Polish Catholicism, Scottish or English Protestantism and, say, Algerian or Tunisian or Turkish Islamism. Hmmm . . . when did the Italian-Americans and Italian–Canadians let their women stop wearing burkas and veils? When did the Irish- Americans and Irish-Canadians cease their honor killings of girls who refused arranged marriages? Purdah was a Scottish institution, right? The English traditionally clitorectimize their females, yes?
2. "Europe's had a population drop before and survived it." This is very true and also very meaningless. It's worth noting that Europe did not at the time of, say, the Black Death, have another burgeoning population already on hand, within the borders, not subject to the Black Death, and, so, ready to take over. Nor was it then democratic, such that a change in demographics could be used to change law to both further change demographics and prevent assimilation. Nor was Europe then secular (since religion, too, seems to play some part in reproductive rates).
3. "But they're assimilating to our values even as we speak." In 1989, according to Le Figaro, 60% of Muslims in France observed fasting for Ramadan. This year it will be 70% . . . and from a considerably larger group. This year saw parts of the United Kingdom assimilating to Muslim values, as non-Muslims were cautioned not to eat in front of Muslims during Ramadan. This year saw western newspapers violate their own codes of free speech lest they offend radical Muslims. They're not assimilating to you; you're assimilating to them.
4. "You're a racist bastard, Kratman." A bastard I may well be, but since when is Islam a race?
5. "There's no reason to believe that current levels of immigration will continue." This one's true, actually. As Europe becomes ever more indistinguishable from the Moslem world, ever less economically, its attractions for immigrants will probably lessen to near nothing. The technical term for this is civilizational extinction.
Ralph Peters thinks the Europeans will revert to type and crush the Muslims long before they become a problem. To this I think there are two answers.
One obvious answer is that Islam is already a problem, in many places (my Ouija board says Theo van Gogh and Pym Fortuyn will vouch for that much), and there appears to be no crushing in the offing. The other answer, perhaps in its way more obvious, is that one must have a commitment to the future to fight for that future . . . or to commit genocide for it. Where is the broad-based European commitment to the future? They don't grant themselves insupportable largesse from the public fisc because they're committed to the future? They have short work weeks and long vacations because they're committed to the future? They meet their self-imposed Kyoto goals because they're committed to the future? (Look, I think Kyoto is absolute bullshit, complete and utter nonsense, but that's not important. What is important is that the Euros don't think it's nonsense. They signed onto the treaty, and they still won't do something they consider critical for the survival of the human race.) They have an average of at least 2.1 children per woman because they're committed to the future?