Choosing Islam

The Sun, which in Britain is loosely categorised as a national newspaper, last week “exposed” a pole dancer called Yasmin as the daughter of the Muslim cleric and former leader of Hizb ut Tahrir and Al Mujahiroun, Omar Bakri Mohammed.  She doesn’t see much of daddy these days - he’s stuck in Lebanon because the British government won’t let him come back - and anyway they don’t get on.  She’s a single mum who ran out on an arranged marriage, and what with the pole dancing and tattoos, she’s not exactly a stereotypical Muslim, yet she’s apparently fasting, and she doesn’t eat pork.

David T at Harry’s Place cites Yasmin as an example of how…

In a free and pluralist society, an awful lot of people move backwards and forward between different iterations of their identity. One generation is not like the next.

The inference we are supposed to draw is that Muslims in western society (in this context, particularly British society), are quite capable of integration and assimilation into the wider community.  This is what other groups have done down the centuries - is there any reason to suppose that Muslims should be any different?

All of this has implications for the proposition, advanced by various commentators, including Mark Steyn, that Europe is undergoing a process of Islamification driven by demographic change: catastrophically declining birth rates in Western Europe - particularly among the indigenous population, contrasting with much higher birthrates among Muslim communities (many of whom are immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants), and combining to deliver a very rapid demographic shift in favour of a very greatly increased Muslim population.

David T lists three premises which seek to characterise, but largely misrepresent, this theory:

How is this going to happen?

• First of all, the birth rates of Muslims will outstrip those of non-Muslims indefinitely.
• Secondly, all Muslims will demand, and subject themselves to Sharia.
• Thirdly, people will convert to Islam, but nobody will leave Islam.

Each of those premises is dubious.

The first premise is indeed false (or most probably false).  The birthrates in Muslim communities are already falling and will probably match those of the majority community within a couple of generations.  However, that still gives a fair amount of time for fairly rapid growth in the Muslim community as a proportion of the total population.

The second proposition is equally false.  The degree of adherence to Shari’a law is variable within and across Islamic countries - at least insofar as the citizens of these countries have any choice in the matter.

The third proposition is the most interesting and the most significant.  Currently approximately three percent of the British population is Muslim.  Current demographic trends would suggest that this proportion will increase to somewhere between ten and fifteen percent within the next fifty years or so, depending on the impact of additional immigration.  The other unknown factor is what the effect of conversion will be.

Walking through some of the great cities of Northern England, as I do reasonably frequently, it is striking these days not that so many women are wearing hijab, but that so many of the faces under the hijab are white.  For Islam is not an Arab religion, nor is it an Asian religion or a “Black” religion.  Islam is a religion with a global mission and, like Christianity, it assumes a global mandate.  The call to Islam is being heard and accepted by an increasing number of the ethnic majority in British society.

The big questions here are “Why?” and “How strong will this trend become?”.  The why is reasonably straightforward.  There are several reasons why someone might find Islam an attractive proposition as a religion.

Firstly (and most destructively), many on the far left of politics, having discovered that their old socialist gods are made of clay, have discovered political Islamism as an alternative outlet for their totalitarian predilections.  The ironically-named Respect Coalition led by George Galloway MP was founded as a marriage-made-in-Hell between the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party, a bunch of Galloway groupies and another group of Islamists.  Although Respect has recently collapsed (as the SWP control-freaks found riding the tiger of Islamism rather too draining of their revolutionary energy), the ideological convergence has yet to run out of steam.  The (largely unrequited) love affair that many leftists have with Hamas and Hezbollah, and the continuing and alarming rise of anti-Semitism within the mainstream left are both disturbing indications of this.

Secondly, mainstream Christianity in Britain has largely given up the ghost.  The Church of England is largely paralysed by squabbles over gay rights and women bishops.  Other churches are in catastrophic decline.  Meanwhile the mosques are heaving.  Moreover, the government, the political establishment and the media are willing to give Islam an easy ride whereas Christianity, its beliefs and institutions are simply regarded as an easy target.

For example, back in 2005 the BBC televised a performance of Jerry Springer - The Opera, a comedy show which included, among other things, a representation of Jesus in a nappy.   Christian activists in the UK rarely get outraged about anything, but in this case the result was pandemonium, driven not least by the suspicion that if it had been Mohammed in a nappy then the Jerry Springer Opera would have got nowhere near a television screen, or indeed a stage. Compare and contrast the uproar among the so-called liberal elites about the publication of certain Danish cartoons…

Sooner or later, the logic of this situation will begin to sink in.  Muslims get some respect for their beliefs (even if this respect derives to no small extent from fear).  Christians get none and therefore regularly get a kicking - in fact sometimes they get the kicking which would otherwise be given to Muslims - the gay police association produced a pamphlet denouncing religious hate crimes against gay people.  The booklet had a picture of the Bible on the cover.  What happens when those of a traditional frame of mind see Muslims articulating their beliefs and worldview (more or less), and getting respect for it, while the Christian churches spend all their time in pointless handwringing and getting a regular pasting for their pains?  Perhaps some of those pretty parish churches in the shires will be mosques in a few decades time.

Thirdly, we live in a time of unprecedented social breakdown.  The family as an institution is in real trouble.  In some council housing estates fathers are an endangered species.  Many young people are rootless, without hope or prospects, without direction or even much of an education.  Islam offers a structure to life, a goal for the future, membership in an extended family and community.  Particularly when so much of what passes for Christianity seems to have lost the plot, would it really be a surprise to see these people turn to Islam as a solution in their lives?

The fourth part of “Why?” addresses the second question.  How strong will this trend become?  We can’t at this stage know.  Western societies generally have lost their sense of direction.  There is no longer much of a sense that we believe in the superiority or even of the worth of the liberal democracies for which our grandparents’ generation had to shed blood.  We won’t stand up for freedom and human rights abroad.  When our governments try to free an ancient and noble people from an appalling dictatorship, millions of numbskulls take to the streets to chant “Not in my name!”  The protagonists of the culture wars have sought to erase all memory of what our societies stand for - and in its place all we have is a blank page - tabula rasa - anything goes.  The point is that the page can’t remain blank forever.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  If we no longer know what we are for, then somebody else will step in who does.

The only question is when.  What will the tipping point be?  What will be the trigger?  A major environmental disaster?  Another war?  A collapse of the global financial system perhaps…