Addle-Pated EuroSclerotics' Heads In Usual Place

The continuation of what Oswald Spengler called "The Decline of the West" is nowhere more obvious than in the soccer-powerhouse, realpolitik-challenged continent of Europe, whose century was the nineteenth, not the twentieth and certainly not the twenty-first.

The Economist has a long and very pointed piece on how completely unable to deal with Muslim immigration on a mass scale has reduced Europe to a virtual zero birthrate [except for 4% Muslims] train wreck just around the bend.

Notice how the old-left socialists who don't believe in God are such avid cheerleaders and allies of the radical America-hating Muslim extremists. No wonder the Guardian and the Independent are such Muslim lovers. Robert Fisk heads the phalanx of the International-Left press corps baying at the moon over the triumph of capitalism. One out of many key observations in this excellent piece entitled "Islam, America, and Europe":

Europe has become a "field of jihad", and it may be the part of the world where America faces the greatest threat from Islamic extremism. So says Daniel Benjamin, a former White House adviser who is now a terrorism-watcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank. Mr Benjamin makes a demographic projection of a kind more often heard on American lips than European ones. The Muslim population of the European Union's existing 25 members may on present trends double from about 15m now to 30m by 2025. And that leaves out EU-applicant Turkey, with an almost entirely Muslim population of around 70m.

To be sure, it is by no means clear just how many Muslims there are in Europe. In France, whose secular authorities never ask a religious question on a census form, the number of people of Muslim heritage is generally given as 5m, or 8% of the population. But that is only an educated guess. Some studies, extrapolating from the difference in birth rates, say the figure might rise to 20% of the population by 2020.

But as the insanity in the progress-challenged Muslim world gets more religiously extreme, the huge number of unemployable women, shut-ins by religious and cultural Muslim custom, remains a key problem for assimilation.

The main reason is that, compared with British Hindus and Sikhs, or even French Muslim women, very few of Britain's Muslim women—mostly from Pakistan or Bangladesh—go out to work. Yet some Muslim sub-groups, such as the Ismailis who came from southern Asia via East Africa, have soared ahead. Islam itself is no barrier to economic advancement.

Amid all the confusion, there is one clear trend among European Muslims. Islam is increasingly important as a symbol of identity. About a third of French schoolchildren of Muslim origin see their faith rather than a passport or skin colour as the main thing that defines them. Young British Muslims are inclined to see Islam (rather than the United Kingdom, or the city where they live) as their true home.

It does not help that all Europeans, whatever their origin, nowadays find themselves “identity-shopping” as the European Union competes with the older nation-states for their loyalty. No wonder many young European Muslims find that the umma—worldwide Islam—tugs hardest at their heart-strings.

Identity politics has realigned politics in the United States over the last quarter century. It looks like Europe will experience the same, only predictably worse.

And, BTW, how is feminism, a leftist trope, going to be a bedfellow with leftist Muslim male chauvinist pigs?