There are arguments one can make against the Eurabia thesis, but the current piece by “a former French Foreign Ministry staffer” in Foreign Policy is very unpersuasive and I am sorry to see Max Boot at Commentary falling for it. Max quotes approvingly this confident assertion by M. Vaïsse on the eventual size of the Muslim population:
It’s hard to imagine that Europe will even reach the 10 percent mark (except in some countries or cities).
But why is that so “hard to imagine” for M. Vaïsse? In his own country, France, Muslims are already 10 percent of the population. In the United Kingdom, the Office of National Statistics says the Muslim population is “rising ten times faster than rest of society,” and, according to the New York Times, already, right now, one-fifth of British university students are Muslim. In Germany, “Integration Ministers” announce approvingly that 30–40 percent of children in their cities are ethnically non-German, and that thus the future of those cities will be. In Belgium, “la capitale européenne sera musulmane dans vingt ans“; by 2007, Brussels’s governing socialist caucus was majority Muslim; and the top seven names of newborn boys are Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine, and Hamza.
When a guy is so complacent that he finds something “hard to imagine” even when it’s already happened and he no longer has to “imagine” it, maybe he’s not the best guide to the eventual outcome. C’mon, Max, you’re smarter than this . . .