Posted on 10/25/2011 7:52:01 PM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
Why Islam is in as much trouble as the West
Denyse O’Leary
Monday, 24 October 2011
David P. Goldman, who blogs at the Asia Times as “Spengler,” has written an insightful book challenging the truisms of the commentariat on both the rise of Islam and the decline of the West: How Civilizations Die: (and why Islam is dying too)
History buffs will recognize that the pen name Spengler honours Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), author of Decline of the West. Goldman’s initial observations about the decline are most helpful but not unprecedented. From a much less religion-friendly perspective, American demographer Phillip Longman has been saying the same thing, and so has Canadian demographer David Foot.
It is what Goldman says about Islam that will surprise many readers: Islam is dying too because the Muslim birth rate - according to reliable statistics - has crashed. How badly?
Across the entire Muslim world, university-educated Muslim women bear children at the same rate as their infecund European counterparts.
Whatever they believe about Islam, they have one or two children, but rarely three or four. Not enough to deliver their societies from demographic collapse, given the size of the families they came from. For example,
The average young Tunisian woman - like her Iranian or Turkish counterpart - grew up in a family of seven children, but will bear only one or two herself.
Education for women doesn’t in itself cause birth dearth, but abandonment of the land does. Muslims are not immune from the urbanization that turns children who were once a source of wealth into a major cost centre. Increasing numbers of people, there as here, hope that others will undertake the trouble.
But surely some Muslims have large families? Those who do live in areas that are considered backward, and they cannot indefinitely prop up an unsustainably low urban birth rate. But because demographic decline happened so quickly in Muslim societies, the Western problem of too few young people supporting too many seniors will be much more severe, especially in countries with few natural resources, like Turkey.
One might ask, why can’t Islamism reverse the decline by demanding that urban women do their duty? A look at Iran, Goldman says, reveals a related crisis of effective faith. For example, according to a suppressed report, more than 90 percent of Tehran prostitutes are said to have passed the university entrance exam, and 30 percent of them are studying. Their career choice is, they say, voluntary. Drug abuse among students is rampant, fuelled by cheap opium from neighbouring Afghanistan. The Islamist could exemplarily punish a few prostitutes or drug addicts - but thousands?
More generally, when modernization comes quickly, without warning, and from elsewhere, a declining birth rate can be accompanied by worse, not better, conditions for modern women. In Turkey, for example, only 22 percent of women sought employment outside the home in 2009, down from 34 percent in 1988 - despite their intervening fertility crash. About this, Goldman observes, “If we are surprised by Muslim demographics, it is because we have not listened carefully enough to what Muslims themselves have been trying to tell us.” Islamism is more of a last stand for many than a resurgent force, hence the glamour of suicide. If all this is correct, demographic collapse will increase rather than decrease the risk of terrorism, because “there is no such thing as rational self-interest for people who believe they have nothing to lose.”
Those inclined to dismiss Goldman’s contrarian analysis might point out that if there are few young people for the Islamist to recruit, there will be few suicide terrorists. Not necessarily; a culture’s suicidal resistance often increases at precisely the point where a huge conflict is irretrievably lost. This was true of the South in the closing days of the Civil War, and of Germany and Japan in World War II, for example. Many won’t be trying to win, only to inflict damage on the victor.
Compounding the problem is that Islam is - at present - much less well-adapted to political systems that produce stability in a modern environment. The rule of life among Islamists is authoritarianism in every facet of life. Authoritarianism results in either accepted oppression or revolt, but not the consensual stability that a modern society needs. And imams provide little guidance as to how to get there, because many see the very behaviours that hamper progress as ordained by Allah. For these reasons, Goldman thinks, the threat to the West from Islamism is generally overrated; internal demographic collapse is a much more serious threat. No civilization has ever survived a situation in which a small number of young adults must support a large number of retirees as well as raise children to support them.
Interestingly, he think that the United States has a much better chance of surviving the collapse than Europe or the Muslim world, for reasons we will explore in Part II next week.
Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.
The world only had half as many people a generation ago. I guess that explains why there were no businesses, no families, and no future back then.
Lucifer was the first rugged individualist ;-)
There’s a difference between freedom and licentiousness. Man has certain obligations, the first of which was outlined in the first commandment in scripture, “Be fruitful and multiply.” That command has never been rescinded. For good reason.
The problem isn’t the absolute population, but the structure of the population. By structure I mean the proportion of productive versus non-productive and the costs of caring for the non-productive portion. Elderly have much greater needs and expectations in their care, compared to children, and their needs grow with age rather than decrease. At the end of the elderlys’ dependence they aren’t productive members, but deceased so their is literally no future for society in them.
Cool! Thanks.
10,000 lemmings can't be wrong, hmmm?
You can worship at the idol of individualism all you want, but it won't change the mathematical fact that stable population numbers require an average of 2.1-2.2 children per woman.
Sustained fertility rates below that amount to a culture or nation voting for its own suicide.
This is a site for pro-freedom people. There are plenty of alternatives for people who see through vision-of-the-anointed goggles.
These things take care of themselves -- for example, we used to need 90% of the population working the land to grow enough food to feed everybody, now, it's more like 0.9%.
I swear, I could make a fortune selling sky-proof umbrellas to all the Chicken Littles out there.
“There are plenty of alternatives for people who see through vision-of-the-anointed goggles.”
Nice Thomas Sowell reference.
“Furthermore, a civilisation which upholds a “sacred, fundamental, constitutional right” to slaughter unborn children has little room for pointing fingers at the murderous tendencies of other civilisations.”
I agree completely on the subject of baby-killing, but even a murderer has a moral right to say, “Murder is wrong.”
“Our current economic chill is just the beginning of a long demographic winter that will soon have much of the world in its deadly grip.”
Maybe I missed it, but there are two factors I never see anybody talking about.
1. The availability of easily concealed contraceptives to women, on demand and even free.
2. The abolition of a husband’s right to insist on his marital rights.
Lots of children used to be born as a result of husbands’ insistence on their marital rights in the absence of contraceptives.
Not any more.
Satan at work again? You be the judge.
No, never mind, I’ll be the judge. It is.
Or are you Oprah Winfrey posting under this handle, making a fine distinction between "rape" and "rape-rape"?
Freedom demands responsibility. Without responsibility there can be no freedom. Our Founding Fathers and most conservatives realize that, perhaps you do not.
Yes -- specifically, the responsibility to slap down the enemies of freedom whenever they dare raise their ugly heads.
“There is no such thing as a right to rape.”
If you have actually bought into the lunatic notion of “spousal rape,” then I don’t think we should bother trying to communicate.
Lloyd? Lloyd Christmas, is that you?
Never mind, you just go on aheaed and keep that mind closed. It’s much more safe and secure that way.
If the consequences of what I am saying are outside your comfort zone, just pretend I said something else. Works for the libtards, right?
Besides, the liberals responsible for the spousal rape nonsense are *so* much smarter than anyone who ever lived before that thousands of years of history can be discarded sans souci.
I suppose a greenie-weenie nature worshipper like you would disagree, but sensible people don't pay any attention to such cultists.
“I suppose a greenie-weenie nature worshipper like you would disagree”
I suppose you’re hoping your silly insults will make me angry enough to act badly.
Gee, who else do we know that employs that strategy?
“Yes, in fact we ARE much smarter these days about matters of morality than our benighted primitive ancestors”
Is that why we’ve murdered over 50 million babies in this country alone since Roe versus Wade? Is that why criticism of same-sex attraction disorder gets people in trouble? Is that why we have so many illegitimate children and children of divorce? Is that why the Internet, potentially the greatest development in the history of mankind, is constantly used for conveying groundless insults and lying about events, policies, people, and everything else?
“we are also superior in the trait that makes us human — bending nature to our will, rather than vice versa.”
What are you, about 12 years old? Many species overcome nature in one way or another. Bees make hives for shelter and honey for food. Beavers make dams and lodges. The fact that our greater intelligence allows us to carry that further is a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one, and is very definitely not what makes us human.
“The separation of sex and reproduction…is an example of modern superiority.“
OOOooooo, right out of the feminazi handbook.
The separation of sex, reproduction, love, and marriage until death do us part is a *huge* tragedy.
It is now clear to me that you are not a conservative, and I have no interest in addressing your nonsense. Run along back to DU now, and leave the grownups alone.
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