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Mark Steyn is a prolific and witty writer whose newspaper columns and radio interviews appear around the world. In this examination of global demographic trends and the spread of militant Islam, his snappy prose is as sparkling as ever, but his thesis is sobering and deadly serious. Steyn convincingly shows that Europe is simply running out of indigenous people. Every country is reproducing natives at well below replacement rate, while Muslims both inside and outside of Europe are multiplying quickly. Over the long run, demographics rule. Steyn provides a compelling example: Britain in 1820. By becoming the first country to solve the problem of infant mortality, Britain produced an explosion of young men that enabled it to colonize the world (and still live off that hard-won political infrastructure). Now, the Mideast teems with aggressive young men with murder on their minds. Looming over the bleak European landscape is a collapsing social welfare system that has made unfulfillable promises to the rapidly aging populace. Where will the workers come from to support Europe in its dotage? Allah’s advance guard has been invited but doesn't mix well with the locals. Will they quietly shoulder the burden of Old Europe, which they despise? If the recent Danish cartoon crisis is any example, it seems unlikely that Europe possesses the stiffness of spine required to stand up for its values. Primitive but supremely confident, Islam senses this. Daily, its rhetoric grows more strident and its youths more violent. British reaction is not promising: for fear of insulting Islam the British flag, which features a cross, is no longer flown in prisons or at Heathrow Airport. What can be done? Steyn has some ideas. Noting reports that the majority of women in European battered women's shelters are Muslim, he suggests that a serious push for women's rights in the Islamic world could fundamentally destabilize current Islamist regimes. Maybe Europe could revamp its welfare system to stop supporting radical religious preachers. We could work to destabilize Iran. Ultimately, however, Steyn admits that Islam itself will have to be reformed if it is to become compatible with modernity. But Islam may have already reformed, and the result is jihad. Could the worst happen? Could a wealthy, technologically superior culture really fall to nomadic barbarians? As Steyn provocatively notes: Rome did. If the advanced culture loses its nerve and the barbarians harness enough of the inventiveness of its enemy, the forces of darkness can win. Americans have the luxury of watching the future unfold across the Atlantic, and perhaps learning from Europe’s mistakes. But if the dark Arabian night does descend over the rest of the world, we will be a very lonely superpower. (Regnery, 2006, 214 pp, $27.95) |
Immigration, legal and otherwise, exacerbates the problem. "Mohammed" is now the most popular boy’s name in Belgium and Amsterdam.
