Summary: Today’s post gives something different – a wild guess about the future of Islam in the West. It might have a big future as conversions swell their numbers. This will surprise us, as such things always do.
“The health of a people comes only from its inner life – from the life of its soul and its spirit.”
— Words on a granite memorial stone in Berlin for Walther Rathenau.
Demography almost guarantees a big future for Islam. Pew Research shows that Muslims are younger than average and have higher fertility.
“{i}n the second half of this century, will likely surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group. While the world’s population is projected to grow 32% in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70% – from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. In 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the global population. Forty-five years later, they are expected to make up more than three-in-ten of the world’s people (31.1%).”
Pew Research shows that the same is happening in Europe. The Islamic population of Germany was 4.1% in 2010 and 6.1% in 2016 (the report shows the number in each nation). Depending on the rate of immigration, they predict by 2050 it will be 8.7% to 19.7%.
Pew Research shows that today 1.1% of Americans are Muslim.
“By 2040, Muslims will replace Jews as the nation’s second-largest religious group after Christians. And by 2050, the U.S. Muslim population is projected to reach 8.1 million, or 2.1% of the nation’s total population. …the Muslim population has continued to grow at a rate of roughly 100,000 per year, driven both by higher fertility rates among Muslim Americans as well as the continued migration of Muslims to the U.S.
“Religious conversions haven’t had a large impact on the size of the U.S. Muslim population, largely because about as many Americans convert to Islam as leave the faith. Indeed, while about one-in-five American Muslim adults were raised in a different faith tradition and converted to Islam, a similar share of Americans who were raised Muslim now no longer identify with the faith.
Underestimating the growth of Islam
The history of the West for century has been a series of surprises, with every decade’s key events confounding predictions made at the beginning. Each generation lived lives astonishing to those of their parents.
My guess — a wild guess — is that large-scale conversions to Islam will be the surprise from the Generation Z (born after ~1995). Especially in western and northern Europe. There will be two drivers.
First, people without beliefs are vulnerable to those with firm beliefs. Vacuums in the soul left by the death of old religions are filled by new faiths. That’s the story of the Roman Empire and Christianity – the Roman Catholic Church (exhausted after the Middle Ages) and the Protestant Reformation – and the Byzantine Empire and Islam.
Technology and social trends have eroded away the spiritual foundations of the West. Allan Bloom wrote about this in his 1987 book, Closing of the American Mind
“I have seen young people, and older people too, who are good democratic liberals, lovers of peace and gentleness, struck dumb with admiration for individuals threatening or using the most terrible violence for the slightest and tawdriest reasons. They have a sneaking suspicion that they are face to face with men of real commitment, which they themselves lack. …
“Persons deeply committed to values are admired. Their intense belief, their caring or concern, their believing in something, is the proof of autonomy, freedom and creativity. Such persons are the contrary of easygoing, and they have standards, all the more worthy because they are …not based on a reality all can see, or derived from thin rationalizing confined to calculation about material interests.”
We see this at work in those European nations that have allowed in massive numbers of Muslim immigrants. These people have different highest values. Conflict has been avoided in most cases by the natives giving way to their new citizens. Those who believe nothing give way to those who have strong beliefs. It is the story of history.
The next stage is that a new generation will find those who believe more attractive than those with empty souls – and defect.
Second, people join religions for benefits. The West offers young men re-education to overcome their masculinity and marriage with high odds of divorce. The Left assume that men have no alternative. Islam might prove them wrong, especially if it changes to better fit the West’s culture and needs. It offers to men of the West things no longer easily available: patriarchy, pride, and status.
What does Islam offer to women of the West? Security and strong men (fortified by patriarchy). Some women in Europe already find this attractive, and are converting to Islam.
Conclusions
A strong base of Western Islam in Europe might (guessing) help those nations absorb the millions of Islamic migrants (past and future, and their descendents). It would give them a cultural “bridge” to the West. It would provide a social form to which they could honorably integrate: a western authority to which they could honorably submit, and one willing to discipline them.
A strong Islamic minority in Europe or America might put Western civilization on a new path to the future. They would be be a vibrant opposition to the Leftist cultural evolution now reshaping the West (ironic, since the Left’s support for open borders makes Islam’s rise possible). It might reduce cultural conflict – or greatly increase it. We cannot begin to guess at the larger effects on the West. Time will tell.
A novel about one future of Europe
See the French best-seller Submission – a novel by Michel Houellebecq
“As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator François – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course.”
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about Islam, about the clash of civilizations, and especially these…
- The Fight for Islamic Hearts and Minds.
- Business 101 tells us what to expect next from jihadists: good news for them, bad for us.
- We are the attackers in the Clash of Civilizations. We’re winning.
- Handicapping the clash of civilizations: bet on the West to win big.
- Omar Ali: Islam vs. Western liberalism; only one can win.
- Martin van Creveld calls out the cowards in Europe.
- Warning of the “Strange Death of Europe.”
- Strange perspectives on the challenges facing Europe.
