A Muslim majority in 30 years?

New projections by the Washington-based Pew Research Center foretell that if the current wave of immigrants persists, in thirty years Europe’s Muslim population will triple.

If high migration continues, the Muslim share of Germany’s population, could grow from 6 percent in 2016 to almost 20 percent by 2050.

According to Pew’s data, Muslims made up 4.9 percent of Europe’s population in 2016, with 25.8 million people across 30 countries, up from 19.5 million people in 2010. It represents an increase of six million in seven years.

Pew’s researchers proposed three scenarios: “zero migration” between 2016 and 2050; “medium migration”, in which the flow of refugees stops but people continue to migrate for other reasons; and “high migration”, in which the flow of migrants between 2014 and 2016 continues.

The “medium” and “high” projections in Pew’s scenarios were chilling, but even with borders sealed off completely, the scenario looks bleak for major European cities, where the Muslim communities are currently based. London, Marseille, Stockholm, Brussels, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Birmingham already have Muslim majorities.

In the medium migration scenario, considered by Pew “the most likely”, Sweden would have the biggest share of the new population at 20.5 percent. The UK’s share would rise to 16.7 percent, and there will be similar percentages also in Belgium (15 percent) to France (17.4 percent). If high migration continues until 2050, Sweden’s Muslim share will grow to 30.6 percent, Finland’s to 15 percent, Norway’s to 17 percent, France’s to 18 percent, Belgium’s to 18.2 percent and Austria’s to 19.9 percent.

French demographer Jean-Claude Chesnais in his book Le Crépuscule de l’Occident predicted an opulent but sterile continent, one in which population is characterized by death, not birth. According to the national statistics agency Istat, fewer than 474 000 births were registered in Italy last year, down 12000 from the year before, with an even bigger drop from the 577 000 born in 2008.

Italy has “lost” 100 000 births in ten years. The loss has been called “the great Eurosion” with the old continent busy “frailing”.

“If tomorrow there were 20, 30 million French Muslims determined to veil their wives and to apply the laws of Sharia, we could only preserve the minimal rules of secularism by dictatorship. That’s what Atatürk, Bourguiba or even Nasser understood in their day” says Chesnais.

The projections will impact freedom of expression, separation of church and state, freedom of conscience, rule of law and equality between men and women even though the mainstream media and analysts continue to claim warnings of “Eurabia” are “alarmist” and “racist”. As a Newsweek cover recently stated: “Dispelling the myth of Eurabia”.

Considering what Europe witnessed in the last few years under terrorism and multiculturalism, the next thirty years could be worse, and not many have had the courage to sound an alarm.

The British Arabist scholar, Bernard Lewis, sent out a warning more than a decade ago that Europe would turn Muslim by the end of this century, and dissolve into “part of the Arab West, the Maghreb”.

Also the late scholar Fouad Ajami cautioned that “Europe is host to a war between order and its enemies, fueled by demography”; and the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci imagined a continent with “the minarets in place of the bell-towers, with the burka in place of the mini-skirt”. Commentator Mark Steyn warned that “the future belonged to Islam” with an “enfeebled” West in a “semi Islamified Europe”.

Ten years later, Europe opened its borders to a massive flood of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East, and the demographers have reviewed their assessments.