A seven-minute YouTube video, “Muslim Demographics,” took the internet by storm in 2009, attracting more than 10m hits. The video gives the low birthrates of Europe’s native populations and, country by country, contrasts them with the high fertility rates of European Muslims. It then careers off into fantasy, claiming the average French Muslim woman bears 8.1 children (it is around three), and that 30 per cent of French people under 20 are Muslim (the real figure is 5.7 per cent). Even so, the video paints a seemingly convincing picture of a Muslim reconquista by 2050—the point is that Muslims could peacefully conquer Europe by simple demographics, as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi claims. Welcome to the world of those worrying about the creation of a new continent: Eurabia.
Eurabianism abounds online, apparently touching on widely held anxieties. Most of it is exaggeration, and easy for liberal commentators to dismiss as an alarmist fantasy. But those who reject the fantasies often too airily reject more plausible arguments. Eurabia sceptics fail to appreciate that seemingly minor differences in fertility and immigration, if sustained over time, lead to compound effects which transform populations over the span of a century or two.
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Prospect has published an abridged version of a response to this article by me in the Letters page of issue 170. To read the full version, visit my blog: http://anshumanmondal.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/the-tyranny-of-numbers-on-europes-muslim-future/