All fair comments & a well-reasoned reply. But I disagree with your main points. Here’s why:
1. I don’t recall the birth rate being particularly important to the article, which focused on the current Muslim population of Germany, not the future population. But fair enough, although I question your data: from what I’ve read (albeit from France) is that 3rd generation Muslim immigrants have an average family size of 6 (so 4 children).
On another note, given that 80% of Germany’s Muslim population receives some form of government handout, therefore I don’t think that economics is the operative issue: they’re not like Westerners, economics don’t really factor into whether or not they’re having children.
Also, remember that Turks who’ve been there for 3 generations were brought up in the secular Turkey, not the current highly Islamic climate—they never had big families like the current crop. Also remember that Turks have a relatively low birth rate compared to the rest of the Islamic world (and always have). So I think you’re comparing apples to oranges in a lot of respects: you’re comparing generations of secular Turks with the new immigrants from highly Islamic places like Syria and Afghanistan. It’s a false comparison, to be frank.
2. That is the number of legal immigrants. It doesn’t include refugees & asylum-seekers, nor illegal migrants. For example, there are 3 million Poles living in Germany right now, all of which arrived via freedom of movement rights under the EU, and don’t figure into that calculation. If you include JUST the Poles, the that number increases by 60% on average. It says nothing of the number of Spaniards & Romanians etc. living & working in Germany.
3. Agreed, the population is declining naturally. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing: a shrinking population means (i) more incentive to invest in technology & automation and (ii) a higher standard of living for the average person who’s inherited the wealth & infrastructure of a much larger society. We’ve seen it time and time again: the period after the Black Death in the 1350s, for example, was Europe’s richest per capita period until the enlightenment; it also ushered in the Renaissance. Or again, Britain’s tiny population during the Industrial Revolution.
Also, I don’t think flooding the country with 3rd world people is the solution: people aren’t fungible goods, you can’t just replace a German with a Syrian and expect the society to continue. For example, if everyone in Mexico moved to the US & all the people in the US died off in 40 years, this wouldn’t be the US anymore, it’d be Mexico-North. A nation isn’t the land or the government, it’s the people—change the people, change the nation. Beyond that, Japan’s had a shrinking population for quite a while, and yet the GDP per capita has continued to increase unabated: the size of an economy isn’t a reflection of its prosperity or equity.
Definitely agree with you regarding small towns. Parallels America in that respect.
Although, again, regarding the birth rates: these people don’t think like Westerners. They don’t have children because they want them, or because they can afford them: they do it because it’s the will of Allah. They do it because they believe they must.
Also, the fact that they get welfare enables them to do it (rather comfortably, in some cases), so your point there is moot. Recall that 80% of Muslims get welfare in Germany, and it hasn’t stopped them from having kids. Same in France. Same in the Netherlands. etc. And remember, the more of them there are, the more will keep voting for more welfare: it’s parasitic. Also, because most of them live in isolated areas (they self-segregate), they don’t integrate, and they don’t adopt Western norms (which include using birth control and having few children).
I was actually just in Britain, Germany & France. I’ll tell you what: Muslims don’t integrate. You probably can’t image what it’s like without going there, it’s like you cross a street and it’s a totally different country, there is 0 mixing. Because of that, they preserve their 3rd world culture wholesale, except now they are able to breed without working. That’s why radicalization rates are so high in Europe—lots of spare time, a feeling of isolation (of their own doing, no less), and also resentment.
That all being said, I do think that there are many more Muslims in Germany than the 4 million they want us to believe (which was why I posted the article in the first place).
Good discussion though. If I’ve misrepresented anything you said, correct me & we can go from there.
Some decent points.
Some German study in 2015 put the ‘guessed’ range of Muslims in the country at around 4.7 million, and there were around 1.1 million immigrants to arrive in 2015 (figure 70-percent were Muslim), so the present number ought to be near 5.5 million.
There is a wide array of immigrants and migrants. When you inject the Russians, Poles, Greeks, Yugoslav, etc groups into the discussion....it probably adds up to three million. Back in 2009....before this migrant era started up, the German statistics agency sat down and analyzed everyone of an ethnic origin ‘not German’, and came to quote that 20-percent of the nation (figure 16 million) were not German.
Two years ago, I helped an American searching out his original town in Germany. He descended from a Hessen soldier who stayed in America after the Revolutionary War. So I did some walking around, and then came back to his name....it was a bit odd. Typically not German. Finally, I came to conclude that there was generally only one region in Europe where the name came from originally...south part of Slovenia. There were no facts to work from, but it appears that after the 30-Years War and plague era (after 1650), with German population decimated in the central region, his family must have relocated into Hessen. So, as much as the guy wanted to connect back to his “root” in Germany....his real roots were in Slovenia. If you dig into this topic, maybe one-third of all Germans aren’t pure Germanic nature. They simply came, and adapted.
Presently, with the current crew...this adaption or integration business is the question mark. You didnt have cable-TV, internet, or foreign language newspapers readily available on the streets of Germany in the past. Today, you can watch nightly news from Tunis, or read the latest Wall Street Journal.
The cherry on this cake, which I will end this discussion with is this...the German statistics folks (ever clever and analyzing things), noted in the last two or three years, that for the decade prior, 1.5 million Germans packed up and left the country.
They do a TV show here over the Germans that leave. Some stay within Europe (probably 200,000 of the group have gone to Spain). Some head off to Canada, the US or Australia. Some even go to Iceland.
If you use the birth-rate business and those leaving (usually degreed or with a craft), then there’s a question mark on the horizon of Germany by 2100. The plague and 30-Years War did a pretty good job on decimating the population, but in this case...just birth control and preferring to live elsewhere are driving the current situation.