Posted on 04/21/2010 1:11:05 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Our pal Right Girl notices that respectable European publications are beginning to sound awfully like America Alone. For example, the Belgian weekly Le Vif/L'Express:
With a rapidly growing population, the capital of Belgium is already one of the most multicultural in Europe. Muslims are already a majority in some neighborhoods...
You don't say. And where's that likely to lead?
Brussels, overwhelmingly Muslim in 20 years? It can't be totally ruled out... Today, families with children - 'Whites' and of the middle class - are leaving the 19 municipalities of the Brussels Region, attracted by the convenience and low prices of the Walloon Brabant, Flemish Brabant and Hainaut provinces. The birth rates of immigrants, which is slightly higher than that of natives, and the international immigration (mainly through family reunification), compensate for this exodus and reinforces it. In reality, Brussels is experiencing what French demographer Michèle Tribalat calls a "process of demographic substitution". One population replaces another.
Which is pretty much what I said in America Alone - although my comparison of the native European exodus with the "white flight" from failing US cities in the Seventies seems more relevant than rosy-hued paeans to the "low prices of the Walloon Brabant".
Unlikely as it sounds, my book is required reading at some colleges, and the other day I was taking some questions from students who were a bit skeptical of the thesis. And one of them asked how critics refuted my argument. Well, there's been a bit of nitpicking about the rate of demographic transformation from people who say it's absurd to think Europe will be semi-Muslim by 2030 or 2050 - a line of attack which concedes implicitly that that's where the Continent's headed, and we're merely quibbling about the date of arrival. But far more common on the progressive left is to deny there's anything worth arguing over. The more militant types, as Right Girl says, cry that it's racist even to raise the question. But the more benignly deluded do as various interviewers from Canada to Australia have done and respond: "So what if Europe becomes Muslim? What would be wrong with that?" Robert Voorhamme, Antwerp's alderman for education is a bit like that, explaining why there's nothing to worry about in the news that over 40 per cent of elementary school students choose Islam for their religious studies class (versus 31.5 per cent for "non-confessional morals" and 26.5 per cent for Catholicism):
'People see a threat where there is none,' says the alderman for education... 'It is a statement that the composition of our school population is changing. But that is not a reason to be schizophrenic and to exclusively aim at students who choose Islam for their religion class subject. Has anybody ever seen it as a threat that children choose Catholic religion, or for morals class?'
(Flemish original here.)
Well, whether or not it's a threat, it surely means something. I take a particular interest in Belgium because my mother grew up not far from Antwerp. If you had said to her in 1960 that within 50 years 40 per cent of the city's elementary school children would be Muslim, she and most other Belgians would have thought you were nuts. If you'd said it in 1970 or 1980, likewise. Yet it's happened, and it's now estimated that by 2012 a majority of grade-schoolers will be Muslim. Which means that in ten years' time Antwerp may not yet technically be majority Muslim, buts its energy, its character, its culture, its cusine increasingly will be.
Here's my question for the left - for women, gays, "progressives" generally: Which currently Muslim city would you wish to live in? I don't just mean visit, or pass through for a couple of years. I love Amman and Cairo, but that's in part because I know I have a return ticket to New Hampshire. So in which Muslim city would you like to live permanently? Make your life, build a career, raise your kids. And, if you're having trouble answering, why do you think Brussels and Antwerp - and many other European cities - will turn out any different? At best, they'll be like Kuala Lumpur, living on the inheritance of the past and the commercial acumen of the non-Muslim population, but with hardcore Islamization remorselessly nibbling in from the edges. For a while, you'll be able to take advantage of "the low prices of the Walloon Brabant", but cultures in retreat quickly run out of places to retreat to.
On a related theme, consider Holy Week in Cordoba.
In Cordoba - Jihad Watch - Hugh Fitzgerald, quoted below, tells us what happened, at the end of his long but worthwhile account of what the New York Times will never talk about....
A deliberately-planned display of Muslim force took place in the cathedral of Cordoba on April 2, in the very middle of Holy Week, the holiest time of the year for Christians. Nearly 120 Muslims from Austria slowly filtered into the cathedral, so as not to attract the attention of guards and, using walkie-talkies, arranged to meet at a certain time, in one of the naves of the cathedral. There a number of them began, in the hush of the Christian services, to turn toward Mecca and prostrate themselves, and to loudly chant in unison. When asked by the security guards to please stop, they refused, and began to threaten the guards who, in turn, had to call for reinforcements from the Spanish police. When the Spanish police arrived, thus further disrupting the holy hush of ancient sacrifice, and the spiritual tranquility of the Christian worshippers, they found the Muslims unwilling to stop. At least one pulled out a knife, and at least two of the Spanish guards, one policeman and one from the cathedral detail, were wounded sufficiently to go to the hospital.
And here's Phyllis Chesler also telling what the MSM won't.
Link:
http://covenantzone.blogspot.com/2010/04/brutal-reality-that-cannot-be-spoken.html
Steyn ping!
NONE!!!!
U.S. birth rate fell in 2008, report finds
The U.S. birth rate fell 2 percent in 2008, to about 4.2 million births, the National Center for Health Statistics reported on Tuesday.
Followed the ‘Holy Week in Cordoba’ link in the Steyn article to the Fitzgerald article and clicked on the ‘Muslims Try to Pray in Spanish Cathedral’ article.
But that link ( http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/02/world/AP-EU-Spain-Religious-Scuffle.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Muslims%20Try%20to%20Pray%20in%20Spanish%20Cathedral&st=cse ) to an April 2 article is already gone.
I would love to read the whole thing.
Time for a prayer service by thousands of Christians in the Hagia Sophia, once a Byzantine Church that was converted to a mosque and is now a museum.
http://www.allaboutturkey.com/ist_muze.htm#sofya
(But that is not a reason to be schizophrenic and to exclusively aim at students who choose Islam for their religion class subject. Has anybody ever seen it as a threat that children choose Catholic religion, or for morals class?’ )
When was the last time a Catholic stoned his daughter to death because she got a job or wore jeans or became to “western”
You can not compare a religion (Christianity) to a socio-politoco-culture-religion (Islam)
To be perfectly fair, the cathedral of Cordoba was originally built as a mosque. It’s not unreasonable for Muslims to want it back.
To be even more perfectly fair, Muslims would then have to give back all the Christian churches and Jewish religious sites they have converted to mosques, from Hagia Sophia in Constantinople to the Temple Mount.
Thank God for Mark and the people doing what he’s dong. They are the watchmen on the walls.
Fine. Hagia Sophia was originally built as a cathedral, can we have THAT back?
Sorry, Sherman, these kinds of ideas are ludicrous and tend to obscure the issues that actually matter.
Is accomplishing that the point of your post?
Did you read my whole post? That was my point. If they want perfect justice, they’d have to give back a lot more buildings than Christians would.
Which muslim city would I currently like to nuke???? Here, let me begin this ponderous list with...................................................................
How long will it take before Whitey realizes he needs to go on a birth rate expansion binge or be replaced demographically? Probably after it is too late.
Amazing story about Cordoba. Do the Spanish have the will left to resist?
Detroit has lots of room available. Fleeing Europeans could buy an entire semi-green field area of the city (with streets, water, and sewer already in place) and build a replica of their homeland. They could even start their own ethnic school.
Detroit has lots of room available. Fleeing Europeans could buy an entire semi-green field area of the city (with streets, water, and sewer already in place) and build a replica of their homeland. They could even start their own ethnic school.
The real question is "Do the Spanish have the people left to resist?"
As Mark Steyn pointed out in America Alone, Spain's birth rate has been so low for so long that its native population will halve in the next twenty years! And Steyn wrote that in 2006. Spain is dying, and quickly.
I’m an idiot and really SHOULD have read the very next sentence.
sorry!
Thank God that never happens to the rest of us. /s :-)
I’m glad you also showed the story about Holy week in Cordoba.
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