When will Eurabia rise?

[Aimless]

After a brief lull the alarmist rants about Eurabia are back again on my social media feeds, louder and crazier than ever. Apparently countries like Sweden and Germany will have Muslim majorities by 2025, 2050 or sometime this century, Islamic laws will be implemented and these naïve and foolish states will finally become Islamic states wherein Christians and Atheists will constitute a small, fearful, persecuted minority. It'll be just like Lebanon (except nothing like Lebanon at all).

It's an annoying but still kinda interesting meme not least because the ideas and misconceptions underlying it are so intuitively appealing to many people.

I'd like to ask for your predictions on when--if ever--Europe or any particular western European country will get a Muslim majority.

The most persuasive forecasts I've been able to find are a little too old and haven't really taken into account the large number of immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea that have come to eg. Sweden and Germany in the last few years. Forecasts from 2011 showed ofc. that the Eurabian caliphate wouldn't be anything more than a twisted fantasy, at least for the foreseeable future but has the situation changed?

[RandBlade]

Won't happen, but the idea of either Shia or Sunni Islam (Sunni I guess) being the largest religious denomination within a western European nation is entirely possible. That's because Christianity is quite splintered in denominations and because then you're excluding atheists and agnostics too.

[Loki]

It would be a very complex prediction. You can't just use current trends to predict what happens because there will be multiple political responses along the way. You also can't account for something like Syria.

[Lewkowski]

Also Arab and from the Middle East != Muslim necessarily. Especially when you consider future generations.

[Loki]

More people convert to Islam than vice versa.

[Lewkowski]

More people convert to Islam than vice versa.

You're saying more people convert to Islam than drop out of Islam? Or are you comparing it to another religion?

[earthJoker]

Won't happen, but the idea of either Shia or Sunni Islam (Sunni I guess) being the largest religious denomination within a western European nation is entirely possible. That's because Christianity is quite splintered in denominations and because then you're excluding atheists and agnostics too.

You make it seem as if Shia and Sunni Islam is a closed homogeneous group.

[Hazir]

More people convert to Islam than vice versa.

I know scores of people who are atheists whose ID-card would tell you they are Muslim. I would not be so certain as to more people turning towards Islam as turning away from it. Which of course obviates another problem; the lack of tolerance for leaving the religion.

[Hazir]

You make it seem as if Shia and Sunni Islam is a closed homogeneous group.

Sunni and Shia are concepts distinct enough to use them in the way Rand used them. You'd also not think twice before lugging together Lutherans and Calvinists into Protestant.

[Flixy]

Sunni and Shia are concepts distinct enough to use them in the way Rand used them. You'd also not think twice before lugging together Lutherans and Calvinists into Protestant.

Well, yes, but he did differentiate in Christianity calling it 'splintered', so apparently he did think twice about that.

[Hazir]

Well, yes, but he did differentiate in Christianity calling it 'splintered', so apparently he did think twice about that.

Eh, no he didn't. That's what Rand wrote, and he may have had 300 christian sects in his mind when he wrote that, but more likely he was thinking about the bigger ones, CoE (strictly speaking just another protestant church but in an English context still somewhat special), Catholic and other protestants as a third.

Anyway, I think this whole thread is a bit useless as you can't really say how Islam will develop in Europe to start with. Long before an Islamic state could be even conceptualized in any European country that country's Islam would have existed under a secular state for decades if not ages. With Islam generally being the state religion in predominantly islamic societies and it being heavily intertwined with state ration d'etre, taking political Islam in its present form as a model for what might happen in Europe in my eyes is a non-starter.

But, that observation is useless because the 'Eurabia' crowd isn't dealing with that futuristic secularized type of Islam but with a combattant and demanding Islam of people who have as their dominant experience that Islam (religion) trumps politics of any kind. That indeed is something that merits to be fought against.

[earthJoker]

Sunni and Shia are concepts distinct enough to use them in the way Rand used them. You'd also not think twice before lugging together Lutherans and Calvinists into Protestant.

Yes, distinct enough to separate them, but each group by itself isn't homogeneous. Anyway I am sure that people who speak about Muslim majority actually mean absolute majority and not largest group.

[Aimless]

Yes, they generally refer to an absolute majority rather than a plurality. The second part of the meme is the takeover and conversion of non-Muslim western states.

[Dreadnaught]

I mean, this is sort of the plot of Houellebecq's Submission, innit? It doesn't happen overnight like the white supremacists rant about, but rather the slow/soft evolution of political/cultural norms to meet a growing body of the population. For example, I realize we're initially talking about Swedistan, but it's no coincidence that the next generation of Labour politicians in the UK will be iron-clad apostles of anti-Israel Boycott Divestment Sanctions.

[Hazir]

I mean, this is sort of the plot of Houellebecq's Submission, innit? It doesn't happen overnight like the white supremacists rant about, but rather the slow/soft evolution of political/cultural norms to meet a growing body of the population. For example, I realize we're initially talking about Swedistan, but it's no coincidence that the next generation of Labour politicians in the UK will be iron-clad apostles of anti-Israel Boycott Divestment Sanctions.

Labour pandering to the local anti-semites does not mean Eurabia is around the corner.