Prophecies are like stopped clocks. They come true sooner or later, but meanwhile, it’s hard to know what time it is. When the Sept. 11, 2001, Islamist attacks reoriented America’s strategic priorities, prophesies of the end of Europe ensued: Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It and Melanie Phillips Londonistan (both 2006), Walter Laqueuer’s The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent(2007), Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009) and Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe (2017). Each was vilified. All their predictions are being fulfilled.
It is worth asking why massacres perpetrated by Arab Muslims on American soil precipitated predictions of Europe’s demise. True, the 9/11 attackers used Europe as a base. Egypt made Mohammed Atta an architect, but it was the al-Aqsa mosque in Hamburg that made him a mass murderer. True, weak security in Europe weakened the security of America. But Islamist terrorism was only one of the novelties that drove the analysts to their pessimistic conclusions. Most of them were looking at demography (the science of population), and how this would alter the culture and politics of European societies.
Demography is a reliable predictor, except when it is not. If current conditions remain stable, then demographic predictions are highly likely to be vindicated, but any kind of instability sends the figures sideways. The European Union was conceived as a stabilizer, steadying Europe after the Cold War, with a top-down system designed to preempt the democratic revolts that destabilized Europe in the 1920s. The EU succeeded so well that it paralyzed Europe’s development. Add a declining native birth rate, and predictions made in the first years of this century about the growth of Europe’s Muslim populations were broadly accurate.
Police officers form a line to block protesters near Eastney Beach, in Portsmouth, England, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (Examiner illustration; PA via AP; Getty Images)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?w=696" height="683" width="1024" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?w=696" alt="Police officers form a line to block protesters near Eastney Beach, in Portsmouth, England, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (Examiner illustration; PA via AP; Getty Images)" class="wp-image-4743321" style="width:875px;height:auto" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg 3000w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...6/09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...6/09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=1024,683 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=1536,1024 1536w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=2048,1365 2048w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...6/09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...6/09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=696,464 696w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=1068,712 1068w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...09/Columns.Green_.093026.jpg?resize=1920,1280 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
Police officers form a line to block protesters near Eastney Beach, in Portsmouth, England, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026. (Examiner illustration; PA via AP; Getty Images)
In the year 2000, Pew Research reported in 2011, Europe had roughly 37 million Muslims (5.1% of the total population), most of them in southeastern European states such as Albania. Pew predicted that by 2020, Muslims would number 51.6 million (about 7% of Europe’s population). The actual 2020 figure, according to a report in the International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, was about 49 million (7%). A growth of 2% does not sound like it could drive cultural and political change. But Europe’s Muslim population is not equally distributed. Large “immigrant” populations, many of them second-generation European citizens, settled in the wealthier states of western and northern Europe, and especially in the big cities.
Nor are all Muslim populations the same. Slovenia, just north of the Balkans, opened its first official mosque in 2020. The majority of Slovenia’s Muslims are Europeans from the historic Muslim populations of nearby Bosnia and Albania. Slovenia’s 50,000 or so Muslims make up little more than 2% of its population. In France, however, postcolonial immigration from Africa has generated a Muslim population estimated as high as 6 million people (up to 10% of the population).
Similarly, Britain’s Muslim population is heavily Pakistani and Bangladeshi. Immigration and high birth rates nearly tripled its number in the 25 years after 2001, from 1.6 million to over 4 million (about 6% of the total population). The British Muslim birth rate remains higher than that of the native English, and British Muslims have a younger median age. Again, they are concentrated in the big cities. In the 2011 census, 11.1% of respondents in Birmingham, Britain’s second city, identified as Muslim. By 2021, the Office for National Statistics reported that the figure was 29.9%. The number of self-described Christians fell over the same decade from 46.1% to 34%. Five years later, Birmingham may already have more practicing Muslims than Christians.
FROM BURKE TO KIRK TO KIRK
UK Demographics, which aggregates government demography, predicts that in 20 years’ time, Birmingham will be 47.5% Muslim, and 53.5% Muslim in 2051. Several other British cities will see a similar shift. The white British population fell from over 99% of Britain’s total in 1950 to 74.4% in 2021. UK Demographics predict a further decline to 56.3% in 2051. Twenty-five years may sound like a long time into the future, but it’s less than the typical term of an American mortgage. In demographic terms, it’s so close that it’s almost baked in.
Almost. Europe’s demographic prospects, especially in western and northern Europe, are unprecedented. An advanced and stable society expects the kind of demographic transformation that historically only occurs in wartime. No European state, and certainly not the EU, has explained how it intends to manage this alteration, what it might mean for Europe’s liberal and democratic traditions, or what it portends for European Christians. This is why demographic predictions are now producing prophecies of sectarian violence and social breakdown. They, too, will come true. Most of us will live to see it.
Dominic Green (@drdominicgreen) is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
