Whose fault was it, and what could be done to remedy it? One of the reasons was, of course, that the countries of Europe were not accustomed to absorbing millions of foreigners rooted in wholly different cultures, who had no particular desire to give up their old ways of life and accept the customs of their new home countries. This is not a specific European feature; it can be found all over the world, excepting only countries that depended largely through long periods of their history on a flow of immigrants, such as the nations of North America, some Latin American countries, Canada, and Australia. Elsewhere, dislike of foreigners, even of those close in language, religion, and cultur~, has been deeply rooted and widespread. Even the fate of the Palestinian refugees in the Arab countries has often been an unhappy one-they were frequently kept in camps, sometimes expelled, and only rarely given citizenship, even though there was no dearth of speeches that stressed solidarity with these persecuted brothers and sisters. But there were other reasons as well. To begin with, Muslim immigration to Europe was largely unplanned and uncontrolled. It continued a long time even after it should have been clear that the "guest workers" had no wish to return to their countries of origin, and long after it appeared that there was no work for them. To a certain extent this immigration was a consequence of the imperial past-Algerians had a right to settle in France; and West Indians and Indians expelled from Uganda, in Britain. But this postcolonial explanation did not extend to others, the majority, who had been born long after the imperial power had given up its former possessions and these countries had gained independence. And it did not apply at all to those who went to Germany or Sweden, to Austria, the Netherlands, or Belgium.
There was and to a certain extent still is a self-blaming school of thought in some European countries according to which the failure of integration was the fault of European societies, which had not shown sufficient goodwill toward the immigrants and had not invested enough funds in helping with their housing and in other respects, including education. But European societies-individual citizens-had never been asked whether they wanted millions of new neighbors in their country; these citizens had the right to vote on all kind of issues, domestic and foreign, but about this very essential issue no one had ever consulted them. Governments and corporations had initiated it. Would they have acted differently had they foreseen the consequences of their policy?
Even this question cannot be answered with certainty. Some might have been more cautious concerning immigration and granting the right of asylum. Others might not have cared, believing that their countries (and Europe in general) had no particular contribution to make anymore, that they had more or less fulfilled their historical mission (if there ever had been one), and that maintaining their social and cultural identity was not a matter of paramount importance in the modern world. With the nations suffering from exhaustion, perhaps the time had come to hand over the torch of civilization to other people, religions, and ethnic groups apply at all to those who went to Germany or Sweden, to Austria, the Netherlands, or Belgium.
There was and to a certain extent still is a self-blaming school of thought in some European countries according to which the failure of integration was the fault of European societies, which had not shown sufficient goodwill toward the immigrants and had not invested enough funds in helping with their housing and in other respects, including education. But European societies-individual citizens-had never been asked whether they wanted millions of new neighbors in their country; these citizens had the right to vote on all kind of issues, domestic and foreign, but about this very essential issue no one had ever consulted them. Governments and corporations had initiated it. Would they have acted differently had they foreseen the consequences of their policy?
Even this question cannot be answered with certainty. Some might have been more cautious concerning immigration and granting the right of asylum. Others might not have cared, believing that their countries (and Europe in general) had no particular contribution to make anymore, that they had more or less fulfilled their historical mission (if there ever had been one), and that maintaining their social and cultural identity was not a matter of paramount importance in the modern world. With the nations suffering from exhaustion, perhaps the time had come to hand over the torch of civilization to other people, religions, and ethnic groups. In some cases, such as in Scandinavia and in the Netherlands, a bad conscience dating back to the 1930s, when refugees from Nazi Germany were in most cases refused asylum even though they were racially or politically persecuted, might have played a role. In Germany, too, there was the fear of being accused of racism if they rejected immigrants. It is difficult even in retrospect to what the authorities in these countries were thinking. Did they imagine that uncontrolled immigration would not involve major problems; that the economic, social, and cultural problems would be solved; and that the immigrants would one day disappear or that they would be well integrated?
All this is not to say that self-confident European societies should have closed their gates hermetically against all immigrants. But they should have been directed to productive labor rather than to being recipients of welfare services from the day of their arrival. Preachers and agitators inciting their fold against the decadent and sinful Western way of life should have been expelled. They should have been expected to behave in accordance with the law of the land and the values and prevailing norms. If these laws and norms were not according to their convictions, they would have been free to leave. This, after all, had been the case all throughout history. Christians from Central Europe and Jews from Eastern Europe had gone to America precisely because they felt discriminated against or persecuted. However, the European governments and societies were no longer self-confident; xenophobia had not disappeared, but among the establishment little pride was left of belonging to a certain nation (or to Europe); a cultural and moral relativism had prevailed, partly perhaps in reaction to an exaggerated nationalism of past ages. Such societies were not in a position to provide guidance to newcomers but were highly permissive. Newcomers to these countries were bound to gain the impression that prevailing laws and norms could safely be ignored.
These attitudes, coupled with cultural and moral relativism, were bound to have far-reaching consequences, and European societies will have to live with them. Illegal immigrants to Japan or China, Singapore, or virtually any other country would have been sent back , to their countries of origin. The United States faces a similar problem currently with Mexican immigrants, but at least they do not want to impose a new and foreign religious law upon the country they move into. But even if the authorities in Europe had taken a harsher course, this would have affected only a minority, since most members of the immigrant communities are by now citizens of their countries of adoption or were born there and have as much right to live there as everyone else.
Following the discovery last month of two car-bombs in London it is now gradually being realized how this might affect Europe's future-combined with the other threats facing the continent. Cerainly misfortunes could befall other continents, too, indeed a great number of disasters could happen elsewhere. Some have been described in a recent work by Richard A. Posner (Catastrophe: Risk and Response, 2004). They range from bioterrorism, a pandemic, and global warming to a collision with a comet, But chances are that in such cases of worldwide catastrophe Europe, too would be affected, so it wouldn't be an occasion for schadenfreude.
No-one can even say with any certainty whether European unification will make much progress in the years to come or how the European economy will perform. But the demographic problems can be foreseen with a reasonable degree of accuracy, and it is to these that we shall turn first. True, even population projections are based on certain assumptions, and as the French demographer Jean-Claude Chesnais has noted, projections made by bodies like the United Nations very often err on the side of political correctness and optimism, as they do not want to shock and they downplay political implications. Estimates by individual experts are often more reliable.
However, even the UN projections that are based on the assumption that Europe 's birthrate will rise by about one-quarter in the years to come (which most think unrealistic) have concluded that by the year 2050 the old European Union will have 60 million fewer inhabitants and the whole of Europe ( Russia included) will be diminished by 130 million. More important yet, after 2050 population decline will be far more rapid because by that time the average age will be much higher and the number of births in a country like Germany will be only half that of today. If one omits from view further immigration into Europe-and there is every reason that immigration will be smaller for political as well as economic reasons (e.g., unemployment)-countries with a low birthrate such as Italy and Spain will have shrunk substantially, as pointed out in some detail earlier on.
Such shrinking of the population can be observed even now in parts of Europe, as in European Russia, where thousands of villages have ceased to exist (not to mention the exodus from Siberia and other parts of northern Russia). In Spain the rural depopulation began in the post-Franco era; it also affected Andalusia and very poor regions such as Extremadura and has gathered speed in recent years. It has been attempted without much success to resettle new immigrants in deserted villages. There is a sizable Latin American immigration (especially from Ecuador and Colombia) to Spain, but these newcomers usually move to the cities where the better-paid jobs are.
In Britain, Manchester and Newcastle have lost 20 percent of their population in the last forty years. About 100,000 people leave London each year. While London house prices are still astronomical even compared with those in the United States and on the Continent, houses can be bought for next to nothing in the inner cities in the Midlands and the North, where the old, traditional industries have disappeared. It is particularly in these parts that strong Muslim communities exist.
In Germany depopulation is particularly strong in the eastern part of the country where the younger people have left. Two thousand schools have closed down in recent years, there are few shops left and even fewer doctors, and it seems only a question of time before the last ones in many villages also leave. But the shrinkage is not limited to the countryside. The number of inhabitants in small towns and some bigger ones is also rapidly falling, the prices of houses have gone down, and even deserted streets can be seen here and there. Halle and Rostoclz, Cottbus , and Magdeburg lost 16 to 20 percent of their inhabitants during the last decade-most of the young generation.
Dusseldorf, which has also lost inhabitants, is still the major banking and trade center of the region, but the Ruhr, Germany 's rust belt, is steadily declining, and nearby cities, including Hagen , have lost many of their inhabitants. The fate of Hagen or Gelsenkirchen is more typical of the whole area than that of Dusseldorf, and the same goes for the steel and mining regions of southern Belgium (Charleroi and Mons, for instance) and also the cities in France across the Belgian border. The ethnic tensions in Antwerp (Anvers), once a peaceful and prosperous city, have made it one of the most problematic cities in Western Europe . There are sections of cities in which few children can be seen; these cities resemble more old people's homes and no longer correspond with our traditional image of vibrant, pulsating city life.
But who will take care of this aging population, and who will be the young, productive workers in the economy who ensure the economic health of the country so that pensions to the elderly can be provided as well as the funds for health and other services? At one time, it was believed that Eastern Europe could provide this labor force, but the number of those who came was small and it is going to dry up even more because birthrates in Eastern Europe are as low as (or even lower than) in Western Europe. There is a great and growing reservoir of young unemployed in North Africa and the Middle East-about 25 percent-and population growth is outpacing economic growth. A hundred million jobs will be needed for the next ten years to solve the problem, but they are unlikely to be created. The unemployment issue in North Africa and the Arab East has been called a time bomb, and the question arises whether it will explode in the Middle East or in Europe or in both regions.
But aside from political considerations, what would be the point of inviting people from these parts at a time when unemployment among young people from Muslim countries is 20 percent, 30 percent, even 40 percent in Germany, France, and other European countries? To have more young workers who are not only unskilled but sometimes also lacking drive and motivation would aggravate current ethnic tensions but not help to meet the economic and social needs. South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the former Soviet Central Asian republics could be a more promising source of labor. But so far the countries of Europe have made little effort to attract emigrants from these parts, nor is it certain how many skilled workers and technicians would be willing to move to Europe at a time when the economy in their own countries is picking up. In Germany for a short time attempts were made to attract computer experts from Bangalore and other centers of the Indian high-tech industry. But the offers made were not very attractive and there were few candidates. (Only 20,000 German green cards were allocated to India, but few candidates showed interest and after a couple of years the scheme was stopped.) In Spain there is a renewed interest in emigrants from Latin America; tens of thousands have come in recent years, especially from Ecuador and Colombia, and the question arose whether this movement should be expanded.
How likely is a rise in the birthrate in the European societies? The birthrate has been falling for the last 150 years and a reversal seems unlikely now. The dictatorships of the 1930s and the Soviet Union tried by various premiums and rewards to pursue natalist policies, but without significant success. It has been suggested in Russia that members of families with children should be given preference in state employment. In France and Sweden family-friendly legislation (providing for long holidays connected with childbirth) have probably caused a slight increase in the birthrate, and it seems likely that other countries may follow their example. But in France and Sweden the birthrate remains well below the reproduction rate. In brief, short of developments that cannot be foreseen, the prevailing trend will not be reversed.
True, the Chinese and Japanese (and of late also the Indian) birthrates have also significantly decreased, and the same is likely to happen eventually in the Middle East and North Africa. It seems equally certain that the birthrate of the immigrant communities in Europe, at present significantly higher than that of the local population (perhaps three times as high), will also decline. But the impact of this decline will be palpably felt only in a generation or two and will not be felt during the next decades.
The immigrant communities in Europe differ greatly in many respects, and the problems that will face European societies in the years to come will differ, too. Generalizations about Muslim communities are of use only up to a point. The essential facts about immigrants to the United Kingdom from Muslim countries have been noted earlier: They constitute only about half of the total (1.6 million-perhaps somewhat more, counting the illegals); about half are British-born. It is a young community and their birthrate is fairly high. Unemployment among young Muslims is three times higher than among the general public. Most observers have noted not only cultural alienation but also a growing feeling of discrimination and disaffection in their midst.
Thus a reservoir for violent action does exist, as the arrest of Pakistani "militants" in August 2006 has shown. But politically Muslims in Britain will not be a decisive force on the national level in the foreseeable future, unless the British government permits uncontrolled immigration in the years to come, which is unlikely in view of past experience. British Muslims will take a larger and more active part in political life on the local level as municipal counselors and even mayors of cities (such as Mohammed Afzal Khan in Manchester) and also as members of Parliament. Muslims will hardly be a decisive political force except perhaps in inner-city wards of places like Bradford and Birmingham and in some sections of London, perhaps forty to fifty constituencies altogether, such as Birmingham-Sparkbrook, Bethnal Green, and East Ham. Politicians in these regions pay closer attention to the Muslim vote; given the British electoral system, the outcome in a few dozen constituencies could still be of importance. Dozens of British members of Parliament will have to look over their shoulders to see whether their attitude on Kashmir, Palestine/Israel, and such has been sufficiently politically correct. The Muslims may want to establish an ethnic party, but this is not very likely. Coalitions with other ethnic or religious groups are possible, but it is doubtful that they will last. The British government has tried harder than any other European government to accommodate their Muslim communities-on the macro level by permitting almost indiscriminately Muslim immigration and the activities of extremist groups outlawed in the Arab world. As mentioned earlier, in the 1 990s London became the center of Islamist radical activities.
At the same time, great efforts have been undertaken to enter a dialogue with Muslim organizations-and not only the moderates among them-working groups have been established to reduce disaffection, and laws have been passed to protect Muslim interests and prevent discrimination. On the micro level, preferential treatment has been given to Muslim immigrants for housing and other social services. Some of these efforts were laudable, but the results were meager. According to a massive study of attitudes carried out by the Pew Foundation in June 2006, on the one hand some 63 percent of Britons took a favorable view of the Muslim minority in their country, but on the other hand British Muslims had Ua much more negative view of Westerners than [did] Muslim minorities in Germany, France or Spain," charging Britons with such negative characteristics as selfishness, arrogance, violence, greed, immorality, and fanaticism. British Muslims were also more prone to believe in conspiracy theories; only 17 percent of them accepted that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had been carried out by Arabs-in contrast, for instance, to 48 percent of French Muslims. If relations between the ethnic groups were bad, more Britons tended to blame their own people than Muslims (which, if correct, tends to show that the complaints about Islamophobia are largely bogus), whereas the Muslims blamed the Britons.
Many more British than other European Muslims (47 percent) were pessimistic about the future inasmuch as there was a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern democratic society. According to the same poll, German and Spanish citizens expressed considerably more negative opinions about Muslims living in their country than did the British.
Another issue that created tension is the preference given to new immigrants for housing, which created among the white residents a feeling of a foreign invasion. An old-timer complained about the signs in Urdu that suddenly appeared in public places such as hospitals. The Bangladeshi community became more and more dependent on the welfare system, even though initially they had been reluctant to accept these handouts, which were considered in violation of their religion. Needless to say, reliance on benefits prolonged and perpetuated their inferior status in society. The philosophy behind the policy of positive discrimination on the part of the Labour Party (the ruling party in the East End).
Once this was the East End of street markets and Jack the Ripper, of Bloom's restaurant (lockshen and gefilte fish), of Dixon of Dock Green, the legendary heartwarming television program of the 1950s, and of Underneath the Arches. But there was a population transfer and shift in power in the East End , which is now predominantly inhabited by Bangladeshis, This manifested itself in, among other things, crime statistics. Whereas up to the late 1990s the majority of complaints to the police about racial attacks came from new immigrants, they now come from whites, even though there has been a flight of whites from the area. However, those Bangladeshis who were economically and socially successful (mainly in restaurants and the catering business) also left the area, distancing themselves from the old ghettos, moving to cleaner and safer streets and quarters with better schools. At the same time, those who did not make it (the majority) of the young Bangladeshi has created the impression among white parents that it has become the priority of teachers to fail white children so that the school will be seen as doing their jobs helping the minorities-and getting more allocations.
Another example is offered by Bradford, a city of about 470,000 in Lancashire , with an old Muslim community, predominantly Pakistani. There are now about 80,000 Pakistanis in Bradford, half of them born in the United Kingdom. According to a semiofficial report, there was a liberal accommodation of Muslim rights in Bradford (including granting them single-sex schools). In 1982 there was one mosque; now there are more than sixty. But it soon appeared (according to the same report) that there was no single definition of "shared values," which had always been invoked in the city . The local authorities and the Muslim leaders had effectively turned a blind eye to the necessity of engaging in a critical dialogue about the idea of an integrated multiethnic society in the city.
According to another report, Bradford became self-segregated, a city fragmented along cultural, ethnic, religious, and social lines. There were high levels of unemployment and a serious crime problem, and drugs were openly sold in the inner parts of the city. In brief, the picture was quite similar to that of many other British cities where Salman Rushdie's books were burned following the uproar over The Satanic Verses (published in 1989) and there were riots in 1995 and on subsequent occasions. Non-Muslims, British and Indians alike, were squeezed out (the term "ethnic cleansing" was used by some residents) as an Islamization of space took place. Churches and pubs were attacked. Non-Muslim women could not venture out in the street in the dark, and even in daytime there was a danger of being molested. In the words of letters to the local newspapers, the inner city had become a war zone. Pakistanis did take a part in local politics; there were thirteen counselors and one of them became mayor. But it was also reported that the votes of the Muslim counselors almost invariably depended on instructions given by phone from Pakistan , apparently by religious or political dignitaries.
According to a Muslim intellectual who grew up in Bradford , the local leaders of the Labour Party and those further left were at least partly responsible for these developments. They had set up a conservative local Council of Mosques and looked at it as the voice of the community: Multiculturalism did not create militant Islam, but it created a space for it within British Muslim communities that had not existed before. It fostered a more tribal nation, undermined progressive trends within the Muslim communities and strengthened the hand of the conservative religious leaders. (Kenan Malik. "Born in Bradford :' Prospect. October 2005.)
In other words, what mattered was not common values but what various ethnic or tribal groups, however reactionary, demanded. Ironically, the support given to the conservative Muslim leaders, not only in Bradford but virtually all over Britain, did not pay political dividends, either. There was a growing generational conflict in the community, and the influence the religious leaders had over the young generation was small or nonexistent. Local Muslim spokesmen did not deny the existence of serious problems but put the blame on the identity crisis from which young Muslims suffered, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, social alienation, and Islamophobia (racism), including the "Islamophobic messages of the mass media." But according to British law, any such messages are punishable by law. In truth, there was no lack of educational opportunities. Bradford even has a university; young Pakistanis did not avail themselves of these opportunities, however-very often they did not even attend school.
An Indian journalist provided an interesting report comparing the developments of the Indian community in Leicester and the Pakistanis in Bradford . (Leicester, a city in the eastern Midlands with 330,000 inhabitants, also has a big Asian community but has been doing much better than Bradford.) The Indians, on the one hand, being the majority in Leicester , had bettered themselves. The young Pakistanis, on the other hand, had opted for empty gestures of defiance and victimhood: they wanted respect, tried to escape their miserable status by retreating into a hostile inner world, and often turned to violence. The men grew beards and demanded that the women wear the hijab and burkas. True, when the Indians came (often from East Africa , expelled by Idi Amin) they had a better education and a little money-not millions, as some Pakistanis claimed, but enough to open a lowly corner shop. But the Indians had drive and worked themselves up.
What could the authorities do to improve the chances of the Pakistanis? This question concerned not just Bradford but communities all over Britain and Western Europe . The authorities could not solve an identity crisis, but they could provide loans or grants to men and women submitting projects that seemed feasible for earning a livelihood. Even if only some of these projects succeeded, it would be a helpful investment. Above all, they could attempt by every means to make young members of this community attend school, to graduate and to continue education or training. They should be given special conditions in school because of their disadvantaged social background. The British government has been running a "sure start" program in recent years, which, like the American Head Start, is an early childhood learning program that has been expanded and should be expanded even more. The same goes for English-language teaching and job advice centers. The administration of former Prime Minister Tony Blair has strongly supported faith (Islamic) schools, even though a majority of the British oppose this. These schools are required to teach the national curriculum in addition to offering religious instruction. But there is no real control as to what is taught in these schools and whether their level is up to minimum standards. Another educational program (Aim Higher) concentrates on talented young people in deprived areas, trying to steer them toward good schools and universities. Muslim leaders have complained that so far those of African and Caribbean descent have mainly benefited from these schemes.Perhaps financial rewards should be given not only to those who distinguish themselves at school but also to those who show any effort at all. Cynics may argue that more money can be made of them will follow this road? The majority will probably find their way to greener pastures.
There are some secular Muslim intellectuals in Britain and some of them publish a glossy journal (Q), but the street is dominated by the followers of conservative and radical Islamist imams. Those praised by British politicians like Livingstone as models of an enlightened Islam, like the telepreacher Qaradawi, are reactionaries for whom even Tariq Ramadan is a near apostate. In brief, the fight for accommodation with the Muslim community in Britain is an uphill struggle. Many of the measures suggested to facilitate this could be helpful. Even the dialogue with the wrong leaders is perhaps not altogether useless, provided there are no illusions as to the basically illiberal character of these leaders and the narrow limits of their power and influence within their own communities.
If Muslims in Britain are a relatively small minority, the situation in France is very different. The Muslim population of France is about 4 to 5 million. French authorities have been far stricter than the British in enforcing the (republican) law of the land. They deported imams who engaged in political incitement (some were back after a short while). They made no concession with regard to wearing the hijab in school or introducing single-sex schools. Their policy has been one of integration and assimilation rather than multiculturalism. This has resulted on one hand in far more widespread conflicts and physical clashes than in Britain. On the other hand, it has also resulted in the emergence of a much more substantial secular sector of Muslim origins. Not much is heard of them because they are not among the rioters nor are they likely to be interviewed by the media. But the rate of mixed marriages is higher in France than in Britain and terrorism inside France has been less than in Britain . More second-, third-, and fourth-generation Muslim immigrants have become assimilated, entered the civil service or local administration, and made their way in French social and cultural life. Whole groups such as the Kabyles (Berbers) from North Africa have not been part of the Muslim revolt of the banlieues. But this also meant that they have often moved out and distanced themselves from the Muslim community. There are more no-go zones in France than in Britain, and political scientists believe that France faces balkanization in the not too distant future. It is probably more difficult to predict the future of France than of any other European country because of the urgent need of reform-and the great resistance to it. It is equally difficult to envisage real balkanization-that is to say, the emergence of separate states or autonomous regions on the soil of France . Islamist radicals may want full power in regions in which Muslims constitute a majority, but these are poor areas, with mass unemployment, and who would pay for their upkeep?
For this reason, even Muslim radicals may be compelled to oppose further immigration to France , for the more needy there are, the less the state will be able to help. Perhaps the development will be in the direction of binational autonomous regions. The Muslims may make concessions with regard to the sharia, and the French authorities may give up the old republican model with a clear division between church and state. There have been cities and regions in France in which ethnic coexistence has somehow hand, it has also resulted in the emergence of a much more substantial secular sector of Muslim origins.
Not much is heard of them because they are not among the rioters nor are they likely to be interviewed by the media. But the rate of mixed marriages is higher in France than in Britain and terrorism inside France has been less than in Britain . More second-, third-, and fourth-generation Muslim immigrants have become assimilated, entered the civil service or local administration, and made their way in French social and cultural life. Whole groups such as the Kabyles (Berbers) from North Africa have not been part of the Muslim revolt of the banlieues. But this also meant that they have often moved out and distanced themselves from the Muslim community.
There are more no-go zones in France than in Britain , and political scientists believe that France faces balkanization in the not too distant future. It is probably more difficult to predict the future of France than of any other European country because of the urgent need of reform-and the great resistance to it. It is equally difficult to envisage real balkanization-that is to say, the emergence of separate states or autonomous regions on the soil of France . Islamist radicals may want full power in regions in which Muslims constitute a majority, but these are poor areas, with mass unemployment, and who would pay for their upkeep?
For this reason, even Muslim radicals may be compelled to oppose further immigration to France , for the more needy there are, the less the state will be able to help. Perhaps the development will be in the direction of binational autonomous regions. The Muslims may make concessions with regard to the sharia, and the French authorities may give up the old republican model with a clear division between church and state. There have been cities and regions in France in which ethnic coexistence has somehow worked, such as, for instance, Marseille, a model that ought to be studied.
All kind of political coalitions could be envisaged. The communists and the New Left have tried hard to gain supporters among the Muslim community, but they have not been very successful. A poll carried out by Skyrock, a radio station popular in the "zone," led to a strange result. When listeners were asked for whom they would vote, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the nationalist National Front, was the first choice, Donadieu, a famous anti-Jewish clown who is half French, half Senegalese, came in second, and the by now new President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy placed third. No other politician was in the running. Perhaps one or more Muslim political parties will emerge, but if this should come to pass, the divisions in the Muslim community that were not very visible in the past will come out in the open-differences, for instance, between those from black and North Africa, even between those of Algerian and Moroccan origin. It seems more likely that the existing political parties will compete for the Muslim vote.
At present there are no strong political organizations among the Muslim communities, and in their absence "direct" rather than political action seems most likely. Following the riots of 2005, all kind of advice has been offered to the French government by international organizations such as the International Crisis Group (ICG). These suggestions include "revising public housing allocation by promoting ethnic intermixing." But it is doubtful whether those concerned will embrace ethnic intermixing with great enthusiasm. Nor is it clear how "the harsh cuts that have affected the public financing of associations since 2002" can be revised and reduced in a period of economic crisis and financial retrenchment without hurting the needy of other groups. Such a policy would aggravate rather than relieve ethnic tensions.
The situation of Muslim immigrant communities in Germany is more hopeful in some respects, more depressing in others. To take Berlin , which has the biggest Turkish community (Kreuzberg, Neukoelln, Wedding). those who made it socially and economically are more inclined to stay in their quarters and to invest in them. There are Turkish banks and travel agencies, shops, and medical practices. They are less likely to become slums than the British inner-city districts or the French suburbs ("the zone"). But it should also be noted that in cities such as Duisburg the state of affairs is less encouraging.
In the beginning there were few Turkish enterprises other than little wooden kiosks selling doner, vegetables, and fruit, but gradually small and medium-size businesses appeared. Some sixty thousand enterprises developed, most of them very small family businesses. But there are also some megabusinesses, and names like that of Kemal Sahin, who studied engineering and became head of a big holding company, are well-known outside their community. Turkish immigrants of the second and third generation have entered politics, are authors of widely read books, have received awards for the best movie of the year, and so on. The number of "mixed marriages" has doubled, to about 8,000, compared with 4,000 before the year 2000.
But with all this, the integration of Turkish immigrants has been anything but a success story; cultural alienation is probably worse than in Britain and France in the absence of a common language (most immigrants to the United Kingdom know some English, and virtually all immigrants to France know some French). The unemployment rate among young people of Turkish origin is more than twice that of others. Eighty-five percent of Turkish and Arab residents belong to the underclass. The educational situation is particularly discouraging. In 1985, some 86 percent of young Turks under the age of twenty-one went to school; today that rate is only about 40 percent. The number of those who do not finish any school, even the Hauptschule-the refuge of those who have failed-is high and rising. Their knowledge of German is deficient; their social framework is the street gang.
The rate of juvenile crime is two to three times higher than that of other sectors of the population. True, some 24,000 Turks study in German universities-that number constitutes 8 percent of this age cohort (18 to 25). This is still quite small in comparison with the percentage of young Germans of that age, but it is one of the rays of hope in an otherwise bleak picture. The situation in places outside Berlin is worse-in cities such as Duisburg (whose Turkish section is Marxlohe), Hamburg (Wilhelms burg), or even Cologne (Kalk and Ehrenfeld). After more than four decades the situation in the Turkish communities in Germany is worse than in many Turkish cities-for instance, concerning the status of women. The influence of the most reactionary political and religious groups is stronger among the Turkish communities in Germany than in Turkey proper, while the impact of the progressive secular forces is weaker. Whereas in Turkey the army command, the judiciary, and most of the intelligentsia serve as a counterforce to the Islamists, there are no such forces among the Turks in Germany . Turkish intellectuals in Germany do not have much influence in their own communities; their books are read by Germans rather than their compatriots and offer no serious competition to the sermons of the imams. The few courageous Turkish women who fight for at least partial emancipation of their female compatriots are considered traitors, physically threatened, and virtually excluded from the community.
What can be done, what should be done, to improve the situation? The German government through the citizenship law of 2000 has made it far easier for Turks to acquire German citizenship. Some 160,000 have availed themselves annually of this right. Candidates for citizenship have to undergo certain examinations concerning minimal language proficiency and knowledge of the basic laws.
These examinations have been criticized by some and, on the one hand, it is indeed true that a person can be a good citizen even if he or she does not know the name of Germany 's main rivers or is not familiar with the leading figures in German literature. On the other hand, unless the individual has a certain minimal knowledge of the language, he or she will (unless there are special circumstances) have great difficulties in obeying the law and enjoying his or her rights as a citizen. It is useful to know, furthermore, that Germany is located in Europe , that it is a democracy, and that the sharia is not the law of the land.
Virtually every
country in the world has such tests, including the United States.In Britain
it was the rule that a police inspector would visit the homes of candidates
for naturalization to find out, among other things, whether the children
in the household went to school and had a working knowledge of English.
German society
(like the British and French) has been made responsible for the failure
of integration and the existence of the ghettos. It is certainly true that
few Germans received the new immigrants with open arms; after all, the
Germans were never asked in the first place and in later years found it
difficult to accept that the presence of millions of "foreigners" was not
a temporary phenomenon, but they were there to stay. The German government
is spending at the present time some 100 million euros annually to promote
integration, which, for all one knows, is not remotely enough to help solve
what is becoming the most pressing domestic problem.
But it is not at all clear whether the result would have been radically different even if a sum ten times as large had been invested. For a considerable majority of Turkish immigrants emphatically did not want their children to live like Germans and it stands to reason that to achieve this aim the self-imposed ghetto was the best framework to protect the fold from temptation. Most Turkish parents, having little education themselves, showed little interest in the education of their children.
Only few joined parent-teacher associations to help with life in school. The children of other immigrant groups faced initial difficulties in mastering the language, but in many cases with the help of teachers the parents organized extra after-school study sessions so that their children could quickly catch up. Only few such initiatives have been reported from among the Turkish communities. When asked about their lack of response and cooperation, one could hear all too frequently that in order to live in the ghetto a knowledge of German was no vital necessity. There are three local Turkish-language television channels in addition to those that can be watched from Turkey, not to mention Turkish-language newspapers printed locally. When conscientious teachers in Berlin insisted on the use of German both during and between classes, they were accused by zealous German multiculturalists of practicing cultural repression and depriving these children of their cultural heritage, and worse. (Many of these pupils went to religious school after classes in the state schools.)
The misfortune of Germany was not that it received millions of immigrants but that these came from the most backward, least educated sectors of Turkish society. What prevents a more or less successful absorption of these immigrants is the combination of social factors and the dead hand of fundamentalist religion, which wants to preserve its influence and which can do so only by shutting itself off from alien influences. For many Turkish immigrants of the older generation the mosque is still not just the religious center of their life but also the cultural, social, and political center. However, many mosques have been under the influence of Islamist-nationalist groups such as Milli Goerues, and some thirty throughout Germany have been under constant observation for suspicion of preaching jihadism. (Up to 2001, mosques, like churches, enjoyed a special status in this respect and could not be observed by state security organs, but this changed following terrorist attacks in Europe, Asia, and America .) It is clear that the key to success is education. Education and the acquisition of skills do not automatically make for loyalty with their adopted country but greatly improve the chances for social and economic betterment and thus at least a potential beginning of integration. Unless the hold of fundamentalist groups and their political indoctrination is broken-and it is doubtful whether the German authorities have the political will to do so there will be no progress.
Social workers and planners have submitted over the years hundreds and thousands of proposals for the improvement of the situation of the immigrants. They have suggested confidence-building measures through "'intercultural meetings" to gain the support of those living in predominantly (or exclusively) immigrant quarters, the removal of the stigma attached at present to the ghettos, and improvement of the infrastructure in these quarters. Some believe that the existence of the ghettos does not necessarily impede an improvement of the situation, while others think that these concentrations constitute a serious obstacle. Never before in the history of migration has there been so much concern and planning. But the results have been meager, much of the debate has been on an abstract level, and there has been little open speaking. The only issue on which there seems to be full agreement is that some problems will be easier to solve if the economy improves, which, unfortunately, cannot be taken for granted.
Different European countries have been dealing with their Muslim minorities in different ways, often through benign neglect, as in the case of Spain and Italy . The number of Muslims (mostly North African) living in Spain is not known, but it is probably close to 1 million. They are concentrated in the south of Spain and the major cities. The Zapatero Socialist government in Spain has legalized the status of the illegal immigrants in Spain , some 700,000 of them, in the hope that this would contribute to normalization. But the pressure of migrants continued in 2005-6: Many tried to enter the Spanish Ceuta and Melilla enclaves in North Africa, storming walls, and others attempted to reach the Canary Islands from Africa . Spanish negotiations with Morocco, where most of the Muslim migrants originated, have been only partly successful. Many thousands of illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa made their way to the Canary Islands, which served as an entry gate to Spain and to Europe ; negotiations with African governments were equally fruitless.
Unemployment in Morocco is high, and there has been constant pressure to enter Europe on the part of not only unskilled workers but also young people with higher education. While there have been few complaints on the part of Muslims in Spain about police molestation and “Islamophobia" (despite the traditional negative attitude toward the Moros), there has been little social integration. The Spanish government has established a foundation to help minority religions to integrate in Spanish society, mainly by means of language courses. But its initial budget was a symbolic $3.5 million-compared with more than a billion dollars that the French government allocated for special education. The Spanish authorities have not opposed wearing the hijab in school and have accepted Muslim religious teachings in school but have not been paying for Muslim teachers of religion. This, like the funds for the mosques, is apparently covered through major contributions from Saudi Arabia and Libya . Most of the mosques preach a mainstream version of Islam, but there have been reports about others engaging in radical indoctrination. There are many indications that terrorist sleeper cells exist in Spain , but with the exception of the Madrid attacks in March 2004 there have been no major terrorist attacks, nor, with one or two exceptions, have there been anti-Muslim activities.
The Spanish, like the French Muslim communities, are relatively homogeneous; the majority come from North Africa, with a sprinkling from sub-Saharan Africa. However, the country of origin also continues to playa certain role-Moroccans (the majority) put the emphasis on their origin from this country, and Algerians no less so. In the case of Algeria there are significant differences with the Berber-Kabyle population, who think of themselves not as a tribe but as a separate people. In the Muslim organizations there has been frequent conflict on these lines. In other European countries the communities are far more heterogeneous, and while non-Muslims tend to pay little attention to these differences, they often play an important role in inter-Muslim affairs.
Ethnic divisions inside European Muslim communities are considerable but tend to be overlooked. More than a third of the Muslims living in Austria came from Bosnia and Kosovo. Muslims in Belgium are partly of Turkish, partly of Moroccan origin, with other countries of origin also represented. The situation in the Netherlands is similar. Among Muslims living in Italy , more than a quarter are Albanians" While there is some mixing between these various groups, they often stick together in their own housing estates, self-help, and social and sports organizations. There have been tensions on both the collective and the individual level, for instance, between Turks and Kurds in Germany , often generated by conflict in their home country. In brief, while the outside world tends to think of the Muslim communities as more or less monolithic, they are in fact constituted of a variety of disparate elements France and perhaps also Spain and Italy . (But France had just voted down the EU constitution.) It was clear to almost everyone that the original federal idea of the "United States of Europe," which, one way or another, had been the aim of the founding fathers after World War II, was no longer feasible when the European Union consisted of twenty-seven members.
Some suggested a new Plan D, but it was also clear that the real problem was not finding new wording that would placate those who feared a loss of sovereignty or even national or cultural identity. The real problem was that a new push could come only on the basis of a new psychological orientation, a new mood, a new attitude toward Europe . Basically everyone was in favor of some kind of unified Europe , but there was no agreement where its borders should be. Above all, whenever the interests of the nation-state and Europe collided, the interests of the former always came first. This emerged on every occasion, and just one recent illustration should suffice.
In early 2006 a meeting took place to deal with the establishment of a common European energy market. Everyone agreed on the need for a common policy. Even at present, Europe depends on imports from abroad for half of its energy. In the next twenty years, the North Sea oil and gas reserves will be exhausted, at which point dependence will increase to 70 percent or more. The dependence on natural gas imports from Russian and Algeria (and on oil imports from the Persian Gulf countries) is a matter of not only economic but also political importance. One of the heads of government (Lech Kaczynski of Poland) proposed the establishment of an energy NATO to provide some mutual help in an emergency, but this idea had no more chance for success than all the other proposals. The EU members were simply not ready to leave to Brussels the right to decide on issues like nuclear energy and, indeed, all others. The governments saw their main task as protecting their national oil and gas companies from takeover by other European firms; it was as if the Common Market no longer existed.
And if there was not a minimum of willingness to cooperate in the field of energy, there was even less of a cooperative spirit regarding foreign and defense policy. The political weakness of Europe had appeared starkly at the time of the Balkan wars. Soft power had been tried, but the diplomatic attempts to stop the fighting led nowhere. There was no European intervention capacity, and later on European countries had to act within a NATO framework under U.S. leadership. There simply was no alternative.
This realization of weakness led to a decision on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and even the appointment of a High Representative who should eventually become the European foreign minister. But no such minister has been appointed so far, and it is not likely that there will be such a person in the near future. And even if there should be such an appointment, what could the poor man or woman do? Is it at all likely that twenty seven countries will agree on common political or military action? And even if they were to agree, they still would not have a credible intervention capacity. Europe will remain dependent for its energy supplies on Russia and the Middle East and will be threatened by new nuclear powers.
In brief, there are no realistic prospects for any significant advance in this direction. A former Belgian prime minister (Guy Verhofstadt) has said that if Europe truly wants to be a world player, it must become even more closely integrated. Whether Europe truly wants this is not certain. From time to time voices to this effect are heard, especially at times of crisis, but by and large there seems to be no overwhelming support for the idea. Even if such support existed, Europe is not willing to pay the price for becoming a world player. But why make such an effort? There is, after all, no common foreign and security policy in Latin America , either, and the continent has not suffered any major ill effects. Perhaps the storms of the years to come will bypass Europe (as they bypassed Latin America ); perhaps there will not be any storms at all. But what if there should be another Middle Eastern war? What would Europe do other than wring its hands in the event of such a calamity? The farcical and wholly ineffectual negotiations between the European Union and Tehran about the Iranian nuclear buildup may well be an indication of the shape of things to come.
A major crisis could trigger a new dynamism and there are, unfortunately, a great number of major potential crises-economic, political, and military-that might occur. But they could also lead to defeatism, to the claim that Europe is too weak for decisive action and that it can no longer playa leading role in world politics-in brief, they could lead to abdication.
Given current demographic trends, European states are moving in different directions. The ethnic composition of the population of France or Netherlands twenty years from now will be different, and this could have a substantial impact on its domestic and foreign policy and even on its relations with their neighbors. It could also lead to a new exodus of Jews from Europe. But there are not that many left, and by taking a low profile they might be able to survive in the new conditions.
Opinions of leading economists concerning the future of the welfare state (social Europe, the social model) range from bleak pessimism (the welfare state is dead and cannot be resuscitated) to relative optimism: By a mixture of modest cuts of benefits and modest tax increases, the essentials of the welfare state can be saved. All European countries had to cut benefits for two decades; this was started by conservative governments (Margaret Thatcher's in Britain, Helmut Kohl's in Germany, Carl Bildt's in Sweden) but the social democratic governments that followed them had to follow the same policies. The services provided became permanently more expensive. This was, on the one hand, the result of more people living longer and the higher costs of medical services.
On the other hand, it was also the result of slow growth or stagnation. When the welfare state was first conceived, expenditures were considerably less and growth was more substantial. Government cuts provoked bitter resentment in all countries and active Opposition; a political party like the German Social Democrats under Gerhard Schroeder that tried to adopt reforms (i.e., cuts) was bound to be defeated in the next elections. But their opponents would not be more successful; they could give in to a public outcry by going deeper into debt, but this was untenable in the longer run and also contrary to the rules of the European Union. Or they could increase taxes, but taxes in most European countries were already high (close to 50 percent) and further increases would slow down economic growth and cause more unemployment. The policy suggested by the far left-soak the rich-was not practical, either. True, at a time of economic crisis, growing disparities in income were difficult to justify; why should members of Parliament receive pensions that were five or six times higher than the average? But there were not enough rich people to be soaked so that it would make a decisive difference overall. And if companies or individuals were squeezed too hard, there was the danger (nay, the probability) that they would relocate to countries with lower taxation.
In brief, there seemed to be no easy solution to the dilemma; in fact, there seemed to be no solution at all-without a dramatic improvement in the economic situation of the country. The only alternative was a political-social covenant between all those concerned to show moderation and to accept the necessity, however painful, of cuts in order to preserve at least some of the essentials of the welfare state. Such agreement seems easier in some countries than in others-in Sweden and to a certain extent in the Netherlands such a compact worked despite much grumbling. In Germany and especially in France there is enormous resistance to giving up any of the achievements of the welfare state. Populists put the blame on globalization and the vagaries of the market economy. But they have no answers to the problems facing.
Europe-a command economy and economic nationalism are unlikely to solve the problems. Aside from the general European situation, there is a generational problem for which no answer has been found. As more people live longer and as the labor force is shrinking, the burden of taking care of the expenditures for the elderly rests more heavily on the young, and this burden, too, is likely to grow. An intergenerational compact will be needed not only in Europe but in all developed countries.
A variety of solutions over time can be envisaged for making progress on the road to European unity. The same is true, despite all the difficulties, with regard to remodeling the welfare state, reducing it in scope but making it affordable. The demographic changes that will take place, however, seem irreversible. The question that arises is not whether they will take place but what impact they will have on Europe 's future. Fate sometimes changes direction, but he who has eyes to see must be aware by now that the face of Europe is changing, and not only in the major cities: The Muslim enclaves in Berlin and Milan , in Madrid and Stockholm , and in London and Copenhagen are spreading. As the Dutch minister of justice has said, if a majority of Dutchmen opt for the sharia at some future date, this has to be respected. To inspect the Muslim heartland where a majority can be expected before midcentury, one ought to take a walk in one of the cities of the Ruhr and then leave by way of the Autobahn either straight west in the direction of Eindhoven and beyond or, alternatively, in a northwesterly direction toward Nijmegen and Utrecht and the English Channel. Starting at Dortmund and Duisburg , one passes northern France and southern Belgium , the major Dutch cities ( Amsterdam , Rotterdam , Utrecht ), and the old heavy-industry and textile centers such as the conurbation of Lille / Roubaix/Tourcoing with more than 1.5 million residents. In addition there are major enclaves in Britain such as Bradford/Burnley/ Oldham or at Malmo in Sweden and also a number of cities in southern Spain and southern France . Some of these regions are gradually coming to resemble the less savory parts of North Africa and the Middle East . I doubt whether Georges Simenon, who was born in Liege about a hundred years ago, would recognize the scenes of his childhood.
Such demographic changes are by no means unique. In the United States , New York no longer has a "white" majority, nor does Los Angeles , and in a few decades Greater Washington and San Francisco could also be in this category. But there is an important difference inasmuch as the United States is a country of immigrants, accustomed to coexistence of various ethnic groups. Furthermore, in the United States it will not be a question of one specific ethnic group gaining supremacy. If the "white" will lose predominance, so will the black, for the ethnic groups gaining are Latinos and Asians. Furthermore, while America may no longer be a melting-pot intermingling of ethnic groups, no group seeks to impose its religion or religious law or way of life on others. There are social tensions, but calls for jihad would not find a great response. The business of ethnic America is to make a comfortable living, not to fight-except perhaps turf fights among gangs and the criminal underworld. There are ghettos in America , but there is also a black and Latino middle class moving out of them. As for the emigrants from the Far East , they have been doing better than almost any other group in business, the professions, and education. Emigrants from Muslim countries, mostly educated and middle-class, have also been doing much better in the United States than in Europe.
How will the transition in Europe take place? It would be an exaggeration to argue that immigrants from Pakistan and Turkey , from the Arab East and North Africa , have been a uniform failure, socially and economically. While there are only a few statistics, it is known that there are 5,400 millionaires among Muslims in Britain (their total assets are believed to be about 6 billion pounds sterling). Among the list of Russian billionaires we find not only Mikhail Fridman and Roman Abramovich but also Alisher Usmanov (2.6 billion), Suleiman Kerimov (7.1), and Iskander Mahmudov (4.5). There are wealthy Turks in Germany and wealthy North Africans in France.There is a small middle class of Muslim origin developing wherever Muslim communities exist. But it is also true that for the time being the ghetto prevails; so, too, do unemployment among the young generation and dependence on handouts from state and municipality. The religious leadership is trying very hard to keep their flock together, and this can be achieved only if the ghetto persists, if there is little, if any, contact between the faithful and the infidels. The young are indoctrinated from an early age, and many of those in Germany , the Netherlands , and Scandinavia know no more of the language of the land than necessary for daily use. (But their knowledge of the native language of their parents is also usually rather weak.) It is generally believed that in view of their declining birthrate, most countries of Europe will need immigrants in the years to come. But it seems pointless to look for immigrants without skills and education, which would only swell the army of the unemployed and unemployable; European societies will not be in a position to support them. What is needed are immigrants showing both ability and ambition, and attempts should be made to attract those likely to make a positive contribution to Western societies as well as to their own betterment.
Educators in Europe who have closely followed the education of young Muslims believe that the older ones among them (the young men in particular) are largely a lost generation. The emphasis should be on the education of the younger ones, with regard to acquiring both language skills and a general education. True, the younger generation has developed a subculture of their own that is expressed, for instance, in their songs and language, sometimes imitated by their white contemporaries, who think it cool. But the rapping, misogynistic and homophobic, is as ugly as their language, consisting mainly of expletives and curses, the lingo of the underworld, wholly devoid of even a trace of humor, as in Cockney or the Berlin patois.
While a deep knowledge of German, French, or British culture cannot be expected from most candidates for citizenship how many of the natives would fail such examinations?-it stands to reason that a working knowledge of the language as well as of the laws and way of life should be a precondition. It could well be that in another generation or two, when the former minorities will outnumber native Germans or Dutch or French in certain parts of these countries, the discussions about integration will no longer make sense; having become a minority, the "natives" cannot expect the majority to adjust themselves to their way of life, to their language and laws. It will be up to the "natives" to become integrated into a changed society. This stage has not been reached yet, but it is certainly not too early to ponder the character of the new society and the implications likely to emerge.
In the regions in which Muslims will be a majority, there will be a demand for autonomy. Separatism, the demand for full independence, is unlikely, even if only due to the depressed economic situation in these regions. They will be the new authorities on the local and regional level, but they will expect the state to accept responsibility for the social well-being of the inhabitants; without this there will be at best impoverishment, at worst a breakdown. Perhaps in due time these Muslim societies will produce an elite of entrepreneurs, of scientists and technologists second to none, the Einsteins and the Nobel Prize winners of tomorrow, providing a major economic and cultural impetus to these societies. But at present it is difficult to point even to the beginnings of such a trend.
Even if the demand to introduce Muslim religious law (the sharia) as the new law of the land is pressed, exemptions will be granted to the non-Muslims. True, there have been demands for radical Islamization in some circles (for instance in the United Kingdom ), but there is no unanimity on these lines even within the Muslim community. In other words, the emergence of binational states seems more likely even if they have not worked well at all elsewhere.The Muslim communities are, divided along religious and national lines. Even in Germany within the Turkish community there is the division between Turkish Sunnis on one hand and significant minorities such as the Kurds (at least half a million) and the Alawites on the other hand. There are important differences between the religion practiced by Moroccans and Turks in the Netherlands and Belgium , between Pakistanis in Britain and Muslims from the Middle East in Britain , even between those of Algerian origin in France and those from Morocco . This list could be extended, and there have been complaints that political and religious leaders from one country (or one sect-for instance, Turks in Belgium and Arabs in Britain ) have acquired influence out of proportion to the size of the ethnic group to which they belong. It will be up to the Muslim communities to find a common denominator; there will be a struggle for influence and power, and the outcome is not at all certain.
"Eurabia" (for an Arab Muslim Europe) is an interesting term but largely misleading, for it does not apply to Germany, nor to Britain, nor to several other European countries. For Turks are not Arabs, and their attitude toward Arabs is anything but friendly. The gang warfare in the streets of Turkish Berlin between groups of Turkish, Arab, and Kurdish adolescents does not reflect any particular closeness between these communities. Nor are Pakistanis that well disposed toward Arabs, even though politicians and preachers of Arab origin have imposed themselves with some success on Muslim communities in the United Kingdom and other countries. Arab ambitions to dominate Muslim communities in Europe have generated opposition. In the United Kingdom, national identity is no longer an educational aim, and neither is integration; given the ethnic constitution of the immigrant population, the South Asian element will be a stronger force in shaping the face and the character of the future Britain than will the Arab.
Nor is it certain how strong the impetus toward religious fundamentalism and radicalism will be in the years to come. There is reason to assume that it will lose momentum. The radicalism of the young generation may manifest itself in religious terms, but it is doubtful whether it is religious in inspiration. Complaints to this effect have come from religious leaders inside the Muslim community all over Europe. They have argued that the knowledge of things Islamic among the young generation is limited and so is the urge to know more about it. It concerns above all the young generation, but also those who for one reason or another have left the ghetto, either because they managed to climb up the social ladder or for other reasons.
As Muslims face the temptations of Western societies, this process of cultural and political assimilation is inevitable; the question is how quickly it will proceed. Among the intellectuals there is the growing distaste for a religion that has, under the impact of radical interpreters, become more primitive and identified above all with political violence directed against innocent civilians. Among women, however orthodox, there is increasing demand for an Islam that gives them more rights than the fundamentalists are willing to grant.
As for the young men, a leading Berlin imam said that the road to the mosque is long and the temptations many. This refers to drugs, crime, sex, and other seductions of the decadent West. Decadence is attractive and infectious. In Britain and in France young Muslims are now substantially involved not only in the trade of drugs but also as consumers. The same young Muslim who threatens his sister with a beating (or worse) unless she dresses modestly with a hijab will by no means necessarily disdain Western pornography. According to Saudi authorities, of the 2.2 million Internet users in the Kingdom, some 92 percent wish to access forbidden or indecent material, which almost always refers not to atheist Web sites but to pornography (Arab News, October 2, 2005). Such figures may not be unnaturally high in comparison with other countries, as the Saudi authorities have pointed out. But these figures certainly point to the deeply ambivalent attitude toward the forbidden on the part of the young Muslim male, the attraction becoming even stronger because of the seductive attraction of what is forbidden. ("They close doors and we get in through the windows" is a frequent comment.) There is furthermore in Arab medieval literature something like a Kama Sutra tradition (Omar Ibn Abi Rabi' a, Ibn Hazm Andalou, and, later on, Ibn Foulayta), which will no doubt be rediscovered one of these days.
In the 1980s musical entertainment (including any kind of compact disc) was strictly banned by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere, and as late as 2003 the performances of Nancy Ajram, probably the best known belly dancer in the Arab world, were banned by the Egyptian parliament on all state television channels. But she and her colleagues can still be seen in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of video clips and on countless private satellite TV channels such as Rotana TV, Nagham, or Melody Hits, broadcasting twenty-four hours a day and reaching a very wide audience. An Arab pop scene has emerged in the Middle East and among the Muslim communities in Europe in defiance of all the bans and fatwas. True, the lyrics of the European Muslim rappers contain lines from the Koran and nationalist slogans “am a soldier in the army of Allah"-or of Malcolm X or of Louis Farrakhan, but they also rap lines of sexism, antiwhite racism, and praise of gang rape. A comparative study of these lyrics is instructive; whereas the Middle Eastern (in Arabic) are mainly entertainment, the European (above all the French) are far more politicized, full of hate and brutality.
What makes the subculture of gangsta rap and hip-hop suspect to Muslim fundamentalists is the non-Muslim (Afro-Caribbean) inspiration of this music and perhaps also the fact that some of the leading figures of this scene are not Muslim by origin but Italian (Akhnaton), Copt (Mutamassik), or even Jewish (Natasha Atlas). As for the artistic sophistication of this subculture, the Beirut professor may well be right who argued that the worst aspects of Western mass culture have been copied, not the best. Fundamentalist leaders found it easy to ostracize Western ideologies from liberalism to Marxism, but they have been powerless vis-a.-vis the pop scene and soccer.
There is nothing in the Koran about street gangs, but this phenomenon (as well as gang warfare) in the Muslim street in Europe is quite important and has been insufficiently studied so far. These gangs have appeared in many parts of the world, and various factors have been adduced to explain this phenomenon-dysfunctional families, personal traits, human instincts, child abuse, urbanization, identity politics, and exposure to violence in the culture in which they grew up. Ethnic factors playa role, too, and some cultures are more prone to violence than others. There has been generational conflict in many societies, but whereas in Germany , for instance, it was directed against the tyrannical father and teacher (as in the youth movement of the 1900s), among the Islamic minority it is now directed against "the other." In the European Muslim communities, gangs may have economic motives (e.g., drug trafficking) as well as psychological ones (satisfaction through display of machismo, protection of the turf).
These gangs are far more often found in the second and third generation of immigrants, and this is connected with the retreat of the state, which in democratic societies no longer has a monopoly on violence. In authoritarian regimes, short shrift is made of troublemakers, irrespective of age and gender. In contemporary democratic societies they do not have much to fear: In Western European societies the police are under strict restraints, as are teachers at school and judges at court. The perpetrators are bound to be released within days, if not hours, and their very arrest turns them into heroes among their comrades; young Muslim gang members when interviewed have talked with contempt of their "white" contemporaries who will seldom resist when attacked and robbed. These Muslim gang members' aggressiveness is bound to give them the respect they are craving.
The gang phenomenon has had an important political dimension-for instance, among Latinos in South and North America and the South African gangs in Soweto and elsewhere and the same is true today. But as far as gang ideology is concerned, how much of it is Islamism and how much hip-hop culture and gangsta rap? It has widely been reported from various countries that the young enforcers of the sharia have also been dealing drugs and consuming them, engaging in sex practices not at all legitimate according to their religion, and listening constantly to rap music, which is also in contravention to strict Islam. The language of rap certainly is not the language of religion, nor of sacred spirituality, which Prince Charles recently invoked (see below), but of the criminal underworld. True, some Islamists have gone out to the gangs and prison inmates in an attempt to convert them, but the gangs have also invaded the mosques to find new members. It is not at all clear who will prevail in this competition. While all this has been predominantly a young male preserve, girls have also participated in some of these activities, particularly in school; this, too, apparently has to do with the urge to gain respect or at least not to be considered "whores" (Schlampen, putains) by the young males had they stood aside during an attack. There have been many mutterings on the part of young British and French Muslims about the formalistic and joyless character of their religion, the endless, parrot like repetition of prayers. As one young British Muslim said in an interview, expressing what probably many of his contemporaries thought, their religion demands too much of them. They would like to do what their secular friends do, to have boyfriends and girlfriends, to go occasionally to the cinema, to watch television, to play video games, not to live in social and cultural isolation.
But they are unlikely to enter disputations about the hermeneutics of the Koran with the imams. Far more likely, young Muslims will gradually drop out or limit their religion to lip service out of respect for their parents and families. The next cultural war will not be between believers and infidels but within the camp of the believers, as religious belief erodes not so much through open defiance but by stealth. This erosion of religious orthodoxy and fanaticism will certainly not affect all, however; there will be fanatics who, for all one knows, may redouble their militancy. As Muslim communities are growing in numbers and will spread, how are non-Muslims likely to react? Some will move out-this is a process that began years ago-from London 's East End, from sections of Dortmund and Cologne , from many parts of the Paris banlieues. Such internal migration apart, there has been emigration from the Netherlands and elsewhere to countries in which they are less likely to be exposed to a way of life they find unpleasant to accept; it is impossible to say to what extent this process will grow in the future.
Political coexistence will probably be easier to achieve than social coexistence. Most political parties will compete for Muslim votes, and some might be taken over by Muslims. There are certain common interests and there could be coalitions. In some places the Muslim vote could be decisive even now (as shown, for instance, by the victory of the socialist PVDA-the Dutch Labor Party-in Holland in 2006, where half of the counselors nominated and elected were of Muslim origin) and it will be even more important in the future. Would Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London , have been elected without the Muslim vote? Muslims have a quarter of the representation in the Brussels regional parliament, and one of them, a woman, was elected mayor. There is the danger of polarization; local elections in London's East End in 2006 showed an increase in the xenophobic vote, the British National Party on one hand and the Trotskyite-Islamist groups on the other. Left-wing parties have tried particularly hard to gain a following in the Muslim communities, but while there is a strong populist element in radical Islam, these are marriages of convenience that may not last long. The anti-capitalism and antiglobalism of radical Islam are rooted in a radical right-wing, reactionary ideology in which extreme conservative elements prevail.
An anti-Muslim backlash from the extreme right seems probable on a regional basis; Antwerp (Anvers) serves as an example, as do the Black Country in Britain and London's East End, as well as Barking and Dagenham (white working-class neighborhoods), parts of Birmingham, and the electoral successes of the Front National in France (Drieux, Orange, Vitrolles, and other cities). But it is doubtful whether this backlash will have decisive nationwide consequences. Works of political science fiction have presented scenarios in which Muslims (and Jews) have been expelled on twenty-four hours' notice from Belgium (Jacques Neirynck, Ie siege de Bruxelles, Paris, 1996). In a similar vein, following the French riots in November 2005, a French "politthriller" (political thriller) appeared (Clement Weill-Rayna, Ie songe du guerrier, Paris, 2006) about a right-wing backlash. Such a backlash seems likely, and not only in France, but that these extreme forces will come to power seems about as likely as Russian fantasies about France becoming a radical Islamic state with a small Christian minority resisting underground-to be eventually saved by Russian armed forces (Elena Chudinova, Mechet Parizhskoi bogomateri [The Mosque of Notre Dame de Paris], Moscow, 2005). Faithful Christians are confined to a ghetto, musical instruments and pictures are destroyed, nothing works anymore in Paris , and even the Metro has come to a standstill.
Political speculations frequently rest on the assumption that there will be a monolithic Muslim bloc, which, as has been stressed earlier, does not correspond with the facts. With all the religious-political radicalization of recent years, there are many centrifugal trends inside this community and internal competition and rivalry. In many ways it is a race against time. It is partly a question of the durability of fanaticism; these waves inspired by religions or secular religions do not last forever. The fanaticism of Muslim communities in Europe should not be overrated. There is sympathy for the so-called militants; there is frustration and aggression and the desire to manifest the discontent. But the majority of Muslims do not want to die a martyr's death but rather lead a quiet and reasonably comfortable life. How to promote the peaceful trends in the European Muslim communities? It is above all a question of raising the level of education of these communities, of inducing them to think for themselves, of lessening their dependence on guidance by fundamentalist imams with their vested interest in keeping their flock in a physical as well as spiritual ghetto. A backlash against fundamentalism among Muslim communities should not be ruled out; it has happened in most religions. But there should be no doubt about it: Even if a moderate Islam prevails, Europe will no longer be the same.
The policy of the secular forces in Europe will be based on a certain amount of appeasement, however difficult it may be for many to accept this. "Appeasement" is a term in disrepute-rightly so, in view of its historical connotation going back to the 1930s. But as nations have failed to take a strong stand that might have prevented the current crisis when it was still possible, what are the alternatives now, as immigrants of Muslim background become the majority in certain cities, regions, and subsequently perhaps even entire countries? A binational state perhaps? But this has not worked too well even in a country like Belgium. Or perhaps a united Europe in which the emphasis is no longer on the nation-state? There are, at present, no answers to these questions.
It means, among other things, refraining from criticizing the basic beliefs and practices of the other side; if a religion has 1.2 billion adherents, it is not advisable to talk openly and candidly about its negative aspects. Quantity, as Marx said, becomes a new quality. Some believe that the quaint observation of Prince Charles-how the Muslim critique of materialism helped him to rediscover the sacred Islamic spirituality-could be a model for the peacemakers on how to make friends and influence people in an age of tensions. A certain amount of self-censorship is already practiced by Western politicians and media, and there may be more of it in the future, such as the decision of a European television network not to screen a program about the situation of persecuted Christians in the Arab world and Pope Benedict XVI's expressions of regret (but no formal apology) following a speech he made in Bavaria in September 2006 in which he quoted a medieval Christian emperor's harsh characterization of Islam. In the same month, a Berlin opera house canceled plans to perform Mozart's Idomeneo for fear of what police called an incalculable risk of offending Muslim sensibilities (in a scene added by the director, the king of Crete , Idomeneo, carries the severed heads of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and Poseidon onstage and places each on a stool).
The case of Hirsi Ali could be a portent of the shape of things to come. This Somali woman who found refuge in Holland turned into a bitter critic of such Islamic practices as the genital mutilation of women, of which she was a victim. She eventually became a member of the Dutch parliament and appeared on Time magazine's list of the one hundred most influential persons in the world. But all this did not prevent a Dutch court in 2006 from deciding that she must leave her apartment in Amsterdam because her presence constituted a danger to her Dutch neighbors who had complained, arguing that they were not their brother's or sister's keeper; some went further and argued she was disturbing the peace and should be removed. Eventually, following a media campaign against her, she was forced to leave the country. Taqi'a (roughly translated as dissimulation or pretending, also known as ketman in Old Persian) has long been used in extreme situations in the Muslim world, and it may be used by non-Muslims in certain circumstances. A new Machiavelli may be needed for practicing coexistence with radical political religions in the age of democracy. It is not an admirable practice, but it may save lives. Macaulay's essay on Machiavelli (1850) could be a starting point for reflection. Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare, which (freely translated) means "He who does not know to dissimulate has no business being in politics." It means expressing not only understanding but also respect and even admiration toward a civilization and way of life basically alien to one's own values. The non-Muslim residents of the major Dutch cities, and subsequently of cities in Germany and elsewhere, will be well advised to acquire a working knowledge of Turkish or Arabic, just as the residents of Southern California and some southwestern states in the United States have acquired a smattering of Spanish. The ( London ) Times Atlas of the World identifies Germany 's currency as the euro and its language as German and Turkish; a premature statement, perhaps, but it could be true thirty years from now.
It also means a more nuanced approach by European authorities toward the Muslim communities in their midst, which, as has been stressed time and again, are anything but monolithic. There is no reason that the European authorities should treat the Muslims as if they were an integrated whole, which they have never been. The British example of dealing with the "moderate fundamentalists" as if these were the only authentic representatives of the Muslim community has not been a great success since the policy strengthened the anti-Western elements. Governments and local authorities should deal with all kinds of Muslim groups. Berber interests are by no means identical with Algerian; Turks and Kurds, not to mention Pakistanis and Moroccans, are of different backgrounds and have different group interests, which the authorities should consider, rather than negotiating only with leaders, often self-appointed, claiming to speak on behalf of the whole Muslim community, which in reality consists of disparate groups.
The decisive importance of education has been emphasized in these pages time and time again. Yet it is precisely in this field that the German approach has been least successful. According to alarming reports, normal teaching has virtually broken down in some Berlin schools frequented by emigrant children from Muslim countries. The schools have become a blackboard jungle of Arabs fighting Turks, Turks combating Kurds, Muslims versus emigrants from Russia and the Balkans, and everyone against the Germans.
Could it have been any different? The Muslim children come from patriarchal families, likely to be beaten for even light violations of the strict rules prevailing. Their encounter with progressive education must have been a cultural shock. The teachers know little about Islam and its way of life, and their antiauthoritarian training does not help in such an encounter. The spokeswoman of the Turkische Bund in Berlin (Eren Dnsal) has stressed that a certain measure of authority on the part of school and teachers was absolutely essential. A young Indian remembering his days at a school in Ealing, London , has written about their poor and helpless teachers, fresh faced, idealistic, who had read Marx and Malcolm X and had taken an elective course on postcolonial theory at a polytechnic institute. Desperate to sympathize with the persecution of their pupils, they were knocked dead by their indifference and rampant misbehavior. "We ate them alive at the first sign of guilt-ridden middle-class weakness" (The Times, London, April 9, 2006). Teachers in Berlin have suggested the closure of schools that are no longer under control. But with all the sympathy for the children's uphill struggle and the enormous difficulties they face, the question arises whether a less antiauthoritarian approach might have shown better results.
The situation in the Paris banlieues is not much better. The French authorities made special efforts over the last decade to improve education in the banlieues: There is a program called Second Chance for those trying to catch up at a later age, there are schools classified ZEP (zone d'education prioritaire) and ZUS (zone urbaine sensible) where special conditions are given, and there are schemes for the prevention of violence at school. And yet, with all this, the results are not impressive. The number of dropouts is several times higher than elsewhere, and the achievements of many pupils are poor.
Goethe said
nice things about the common features of the Orient and Occident and he
also wrote the West-ostlicher Divan (West-Eastern divan), but he is not
part of Turkish history. However, why should children of Moroccan origin
in the Netherlands be taught the history of the Ottoman empire , which
means little to them? It will not be easy to find common denominators.
An educator at the London School of Economics, Iftikar Ahmed, pondering
the low grades of children from Muslim families in British schools, put
part of the blame on the fact that they were spending too much time learning
the Holy Koran by heart in mosque schools and had no time for doing their
homework. Nor could they identify with their non-Muslim teachers; special
Muslim schools were needed to improve the situation. Will the situation
improve with time? Investigations in Germany have shown that the second
generation of pupils from Muslim families is in fact doing worse than the
earlier generation. But what would be the religious-political orientation
of separate Muslim schools? Would they not perpetuate the divisions in
society? Nor would an improvement in the education of young people of a
Muslim background solve their problems unless jobs could be found for them
after graduation. But how far should appeasement go? A British observer,
Timothy Garton Ash, has expressed his belief that ultimately whether Muslim
citizens will begin to feel at home in Europe will depend on the personal
attitude and the behavior of hundreds of millions of their fellow Europeans.
This seems
to be based on the assumption that the Muslims' ambitions do not go further
than "feeling at home," which cannot, however, be taken for granted. Ash
rightly criticized the version of multiculturalism that goes, "You respect
my taboos and I'll respect yours," noting that if one puts all the taboos
of all the cultures together there is not much left one can talk freely
about. But this is precisely one of the main bones of contention: Radical
Islamists, with their emphasis on jihad, want immunity from criticism and
any negative comments, whereas they feel no such immunity should be given
to other religions and cultures. In brief, self-censorship, tact, and similar
half measures on the part of European societies may not be sufficient.
For appeasement to be successful it may have to go considerably further,
praising the beauty of Islam and the justice of the sharia, stressing that
there is very much that the West (having lost its spiritual moorings) can
learn from Muslim spirituality, also accepting the complaints that Muslims
have been victims all along and that their grievances are justified and
that the West has to make amends.
Whether a policy of massive appeasement will succeed is uncertain. It could perhaps lead to an uneasy peaceful coexistence, but it would mean a near total transformation of European civilization. It might be unacceptable for a majority of Europeans, who fear for their status and their identity in a future Europe. It is against this background that conflicts are bound to arise. Tolerance toward minorities has not been one of the distinguishing features of Muslim societies in modern history; the Armenians have not fared well in Turkey, nor the Copts in Egypt, nor the Bahai in Iran, nor even the Shiites or the Ahmadiya and Ismailiya in Pakistan, even though they are Muslims. The status of Christians in Indonesia , one of the most tolerant Muslim countries, is still problematic, and so is that of the Chinese in Malaysia . If this does not change in the course of the coming decades, the prospects for peaceful coexistence in Europe will be dim. One-sided tolerance, experience has shown, does not work.
What if Turkey were to join the European Union ? The answer is it never will; after some initial enthusiasm there has been growing skepticism on both sides. There was substantial support in Turkey for going into the European Union-some 80 percent, more than in most countries that belong to the European Union-but support declined as time went by. There was support in Britain and France but substantial opposition in Germany, Austria, and some other countries. Many Germans suspected that the primary loyalty of the Turks living in the European Union would be toward their country of origin rather than to the country of adoption, but this would be the case irrespective of whether Turkey joined the European Union or not. It was also clear that, given the demographic trends, Turkey would be the most populous country in Europe, strengthening the Islamic factor inside the European Union. Inside Turkey , declining enthusiasm was caused partly by a growing nationalist mood as well as an impressive economic performance-annual growth of almost 10 percent. But with all this, per capita income in Turkey is still little more than $4,000, much less than in other European countries, and it was feared that this would cause a further massive influx of Turks into Europe.Furthermore, the political and social conditions imposed by the European Union on all member states (but implicitly above all concerning Turkey) were a matter of concern to many Turks. Entering the European Union would cause hardships to Turkish agriculture (one-third of Turks are employed in this sector of the economy) as well as shop owners. It would also affect Turkish domestic policy, as with relations toward minorities such as Kurds.
Could Turkey be a bridge toward the Muslim world and, as such, be a potential partner in moderating relations between a secular Europe and the Muslim communities? This is perhaps the decisive issue; for decades, since Kema1 Ataturk, the founder and first president (1923-38) of modern Turkey , the nation had been moving toward modernization and secularism. But during the last decade or two Islamism-or, to be precise, a mixture of Islamism and Panturkism-has been gaining strength, and with it a basic anti-Western orientation. True, the secular forces inside Turkey are still much stronger than in the Arab world, and even the Turkish Islamists, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) , were not remotely as extreme as the Muslim Brotherhood-the very fact that the AKP supported going into Europe pointed in this direction. (It also recently opened a museum of modern Western art in Istanbul.) However, the situation in Turkey seems unpredictable, and a country turning away from the legacy of Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey, was the last thing the European Union wanted. Decline very often proceeds not as quickly as feared; there are usually retarding circumstances. But it is also true that, for better or worse, the pulse of history is beating quicker in our time than in the Middle Ages. The collapse of the Soviet Union , for instance, occurred very quickly. As hard as Mr. Putin and his colleagues are trying to recover at least part of what has been lost, the odds of succeeding are against them.There is a danger, after the threats to Europe have been neglected for so long, of throwing up our hands in despair and accepting with resignation its future role as a museum of world history and civilization preaching the importance of morality in world affairs to a nonexistent audience. Decline offers challenges that ought to be taken up even if there is no certainty of success. No one could say with any confidence what problems the powers that now appear to be on the ascendancy will face in the years to come. The age of delusions is over. Anyone who doubts this should take a guided tour through Neukolln or La Courneuve or the center of Bradford: not the best places, not the worst, but a fair indication of the shape of things to come. These places, too, are bound to change, but it will be a very slow process and the outcome will be a Europe quite different from the one we know now.
There will be great changes in the cities of Europe within the next decades. Will they be all one-sided, affecting only the natives and not at all the newcomers? Perhaps the Muslim women will opt for colors other than black, and perhaps the hijab will be reduced to something more symbolic? Perhaps their predilection for couscous will give way to fish and chips and bockwurst? (And if it does not, what harm will be done?) Perhaps mosque attendance will drop just as church attendance did in Western Europe. Is the attractive power of the European way of life so small that it will be overwhelmed by foreign customs and habits? Could it not be that the new immigrants stick to their old ways imported from Anatolia or North Africa or Pakistani villages precisely because they still are a minority, fearful of losing their identity, and could it be that once they feel no longer under siege but constitute a majority their societies might open up to outside influence irrespective of the warnings of their religious leaders?
Given the mentioned decline, what are the predictions for the future? According to the estimates of the United Nations and the European Community ("World Population Prospects" and "Eurostat"), the population of France will decline only slightly, from about 60 million at present to 55 million in 2050 and 43 million at the end of the century, but the number of ethnic French will decline rapidly. A similar trend is forecast for the United Kingdom : from 60 million at present to 53 million in 2050 and 45 million in 2100. Most other European countries would fare considerably worse. Thus the population of Germany , 82 million at present, will decline to 61 million in 2050 and 32 million in 2100. The decline of Italy and Spain would be drastic. Italy counts some 57 million inhabitants at present; this is expected to shrink to 37 million at mid century and 15 million by 2100. The figures for Spain are 39 million at present, declining to 28 million in 2050 and 12 million at the end of the century. All these predictions do not take into account immigration in the decades to come.
The projected population losses for Eastern Europe for mid-century are even more severe:
Ukraine: 43
percent Bulgaria : 34 percent
Latvia and
Lithuania : 25-27 percent Russian Federation : 22 percent Croatia : 20
percent
Hungary: 18
percent
Czech Republic:
17 percent
By 2050, according to these sources, only Cyprus , Luxembourg , Malta, and perhaps Sweden will still be growing. This is only part of the overall picture, however. For once societies become overage, the number of those able to produce children falls rapidly and the decline gathers momentum. For the first time in history there are more people aged over sixty than under twenty in major European countries such as Italy, Germany, Spain, and Greece. The other factor that has to be taken into account is that the relatively slow decline in countries such as France and Britain will be the result of the relatively high fertility rate among the immigrant communities-black and North African in France and Pakistani and Caribbean in Britain . It is true that there has been a worldwide decline in fertility; the fertility rate has halved, broadly speaking, in the third world from 6.2 children to 3.4 between 1965 and 2000, and, according to UN and other projections, the world population in 2100 will be approximately 8 billion and then decline. (it is 6 billion at present.) However, in the regions closest to Europe such as North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East , there will be no decline in the near future. According to these projections, the population of Turkey will be 100 million in 2050, that of Egypt 114 million, and there will be 45 million Algerians and 45 million Moroccans. The highest rise will be in the very poorest countries. By 2050 Yemen will have a larger population than the Russian Federation and Nigeria and Pakistan will each have a larger population than the fifteen nations comprising until recently the European Community. Germany, at present the fourteenth most populous country, will have fallen behind Congo, Ethiopia, Uganda, Vietnam, Turkey, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Kenya.Russia has at present a population of 145 million, but it will be overtaken first by Turkey and subsequently by many other countries, including perhaps even Yemen and Ethiopia. Yemen (as Paul Demeny pointed out in an article in Population and Development Review in 2003), which had about 4 million inhabitants in 1950, has now some 20 million and, according to the projections based on current fertility rates, will have more than a hundred million by 2050. At the same time, the population of Russia is shrinking annually by 2 percent, which is to say that within fifty years its population will shrink to one-third of its current size. Demeny observes that there is hardly any precedent for such a precipitous demographic collapse in human history.
Common sense finds it difficult to accept such projections, and for good reasons-not so much with regard to the Russian demographic collapse but concerning the growth of Yemen . Yemen is a poor country, much of its territory consists of desert (only 3 percent of the country is arable), and there is little water. The prospects for agriculture are limited, and while a certain amount of industrialization will no doubt take place, the idea that the Yemen economy could sustain a population of more than 100 million defies even the most fertile imagination. It seems more than likely that the population of Yemen (and of other countries in a similar position) will grow less, because there will be neither work nor food. Similar considerations apply to Egypt . But at the same time it seems certain that even if there were to be a dramatic decrease in the Yemeni fertility rate, the population of that country will considerably increase, many will look for work outside their native country, and there will be far greater population pressure on Europe . For more fortunate countries such as Turkey, however, the projections for 2050 and beyond seem quite realistic. And it also seems quite realistic that Europe's share in the world population will be no more than 4 to 5 percent in 2050, in the lifetime of many of those living now, having been 25 percent in 1900 and 12 percent in 1950. The same considerations apply to projections beyond the year 2100. According to the UN projections for the year 2300, the population of Europe will have fallen to a mere 59 million. Many European countries will be reduced to about 5 percent of their current population and Russia and Italy to 1 percent, less than live at present in the cities of Novosibirsk or Turin , respectively. While such a possibility cannot be ruled out, projections for long periods almost two hundred years into the future cannot possibly take into account scientific and technological developments. We do not know what progress medicine will make or how long people will live in two hundred years. However, pandemics or wars or natural disasters may have an impact that cannot be calculated. We do not know the impact of new technologies on labor productivity-how much of a workforce will be needed to keep the economies going. New ideologies or religions may appear that could influence population growth or decline.Some have argued that if Europe is still a continent of any importance two hundred years from now, it will almost certainly be a black continent. Others have predicted that at the end of the twenty-first century Europe will be Islamic. Such predictions are based on the higher African and Middle Eastern birthrate on one hand and the need for massive immigration into Europe on the other. Since Europe will be graying even in the next few decades, younger workers will be needed to secure the survival in reasonable comfort of the older generation no longer active in the workforce.
According to a scenario presented in the UN report Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? no fewer than 700 million immigrants will be needed for the period between 1995 and 2050 to restore the age balance. But such figures largely belong to the realm of fantasy, for it is not known how many workers will be needed, nor from whence they will come. India and China , too, are aging and the birthrate is falling even in Bangladesh. At present the European problem is unemployment among young immigrant workers and the fact that many of them lack the skills needed to be of assistance in the workforce. Many of the second generation have not done well in the European educational system, which means that this problem is not likely to disappear soon. And even if they had the necessary skills, it is not clear whether they would be willing to work (as it were) for the wellbeing of the senior citizens of a society with which they do not identify. It will be difficult enough to reach a generational contract within the European societies, let alone a contract including newcomers from abroad. That Europe will need immigrants from abroad goes without saying, but whether such immigrants with the qualifications needed will be at all available is not known.
It is doubtful whether Europe will be Muslim at the end of this century. This might be true with regard to some cities and provinces, and it goes without saying that the Muslim element will playa far greater role in European politics and society than at present. But it will not apply to the continent as a whole for a variety of reasons. In the first place, many of the new immigrants to Europe are not Muslim-they come from India and Southeast Asia, from tropical Africa, the West Indies , and other parts of the world (more about this later). And while it is true that Muslim immigrants have been very resistant to absorption and integration, it is not certain that this will continue with equal intensity for several generations. In other words, the meaning of individuals or a community being "Islamic" by the end of the twenty-first century is by no means clear; it is only a projection that could be altered by all kinds of factors. That Europe at the end of the century will be very different from present-day Europe goes without saying. For all one knows, the continent might be greatly diminished in stature and influence and in deep trouble. But it will not necessarily be predominantly Islamist.
Update: On Sept.10, 2007, The Times (UK) exposed the anti-Western creed of some British Deobandis who preach that non-Muslims are an evil and corrupting influence. Their defensive, isolationist approach to life in Britain is shared by many British supporters of Tablighi Jamaat. One leading advocate, Ebrahim Rangooni, has said that the movement seeks to “rescue the ummah [the global Muslim community] from the culture and civilisation of the Jews, the Christians and [other] enemies of Islam”. Its aim, he wrote, is to “create such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta”.
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