Brookings Institution scholar Justin Vaïsse
adds his say to the debate on Islam in Europe. Read on for the real thrust of his argument (which is not what's directly below).
"By 2050, Europe will be unrecognizable. Instead of romantic cafes,
Paris's Boulevard Saint-Germain will be lined with halal butcheries and
hookah bars; the street signs in Berlin will be written in Turkish.
School-children from Oslo to Naples will read Quranic verses in class,
and women will be veiled.
At least, that's what the authors of the strange new genre of "Eurabia"
literature want you to believe. Not all books of this alarmist
Europe-is-dying category... offer such dire and colorful predictions. But they all make the case
that low fertility rates among natives, massive immigration from Muslim
countries, and the fateful encounter between an assertive Islamic
culture and a self-effacing European one will lead to a Europe devoid of
all Western identity. (...)"
Vaïsse continues...
"... But to large majorities of Europe's Muslims, Islam is neither an
exclusive identity nor a marching order. Recent poll data from Gallup
show that most European Muslims happily combine their national and
religious identities, and a 2009 Harvard University working paper
by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris demonstrates that in the long
term, the basic cultural values of Muslim migrants evolve to conform to
the predominant culture of the European society in which they live.
More generally, average European Muslims worry first and foremost about
bread-and-butter issues, and to the extent that they are religious, they
want to be able to practice religion freely and in decent conditions,
not to impose the caliphate. As a 2006 pan-European Pew Research Center study makes
clear, "Muslims in Europe worry about their future, but their concern
is more economic than religious or cultural," and though there are
tensions, these are mostly due to racism, not some grandiose clash of
cultures.
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