| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Islam could become Europe's dominant religion |
| 2007-03-04 |
| As the Anglican Communion continues to fight over homosexuality and as church attendance plummets, experts say that Islam is well on its way to becoming the most dominant religion in Europe, according to an article posted on CNSNews.com. Meeting in London this week in their General Synod, leaders of the Church of England continued to debate the role of gay and lesbian priests. This follows another meeting in Tanzania in which Anglican bishops issued an official warning over the matter to the Episcopal Church – the American wing of the communion. Meanwhile, research studies show that church attendance in Britain is dropping precipitously, as well as across the whole of Western Europe. According to Christian Research, a British think tank, only 6.3 percent of the British population in 2005 attended Christian services on a weekly basis. But while church attendance on the continent reportedly shows a similar decline, the Muslim population has exploded, said the CNSNews.com article. It quoted experts as saying that in recent years, young European Muslims had been returning to the faith which their parents observed only sporadically, becoming much more devout. Christian Research said that in 35 years, there would be twice as many Muslims in mosques on Friday as there are Christians in churches on Sunday. Europe has seen a wave of Muslim immigration over the last century, and some experts predict they will become the dominant population by the end of this century. In January, a British government-sponsored think tank projected that Muslims would be the majority population of Germany by 2046. Brent Nelson, an expert on European Islam, told the Cybercast News Service that it was hard to guess what a Europe with a large Muslim minority would look like. However, he said that unless Christians and Muslims as a whole learned to compromise and live together, there was a danger of a clash between the two cultures. A professor of religious studies at Glasgow University said she thought increasing numbers of Christians would convert to Islam in the coming years. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #26 That America opposed and ended up stopping the Serb genocide of Bosnian Muslims is possibly one of the best things it has done in the last 50 or 60 years -- it's kinda revelatory that it's the one and only American intervention in living memory that Rantburgers oppose. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2007-03-04 21:24 |
| #25 Back to your hole, troll. short and sweet.. LOL! |
| Posted by: RD 2007-03-04 22:16 |
| #24 Both parts, NS. Mormons are not prohibited by any tenet of the religion from using birth control. They are advised to have "as many children as they feel they can properly raise." |
| Posted by: mac 2007-03-04 21:45 |
| #23 Darrell - good man :-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-03-04 21:44 |
| #22 It's also "kinda revelatory" how quickly you will lump all Rantburgers into a sweeping generalization. Back to your hole, troll. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2007-03-04 21:34 |
| #21 The Pope says the same thing, but most Christians are smart enough to ignore it. And if any one knows ignorance, it's our own Nimble Spemble. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2007-03-04 20:51 |
| #20 Nimble Spemble, you're wrong about the Pope, too. Not about accepting all the children God chooses to give one, but that the reason is to conquer the world by population pressure. Only the Muslims choose such a goal. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-03-04 20:34 |
| #19 Secret Master: I dunno. The Orthodox don't really strike me as milquetoast. Remember Bosnia, Kosovo, etc? You know - the wars we took the wrong side on? Point taken. I should have qualified that by limiting it to western Europe (you know: Old Europe). They, I believe, are all but cooked. |
| Posted by: xbalanke 2007-03-04 18:29 |
| #18 You're absolutely wrong about the Mormons, NS. Which part? Abstaining from contraception or ignoring rules? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-03-04 17:31 |
| #17 Willy Clinton's a queer. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2007-03-04 17:15 |
| #16 All the other religions are milquetoast compared to Islam. I dunno. The Orthodox don't really strike me as milquetoast. Remember Bosnia, Kosovo, etc? You know - the wars we took the wrong side on? |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2007-03-04 17:05 |
| #15 You're absolutely wrong about the Mormons, NS. |
| Posted by: mac 2007-03-04 16:27 |
| #14 They are told by Imans in the west to populate fast so they can take over This is common in religions. The Pope says the same thing, but most Christians are smart enough to ignore it. So do the Mormons, but fewer ignore it. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-03-04 14:57 |
| #13 Demographics aside, Islam is already the dominant religion in Europe, as far as influence over politics and culture go. All the other religions are milquetoast compared to Islam. |
| Posted by: xbalanke 2007-03-04 14:54 |
| #12 I always believed you should only have children if you can afford them. Muslims dont think in this way!!!!! They are told by Imans in the west to populate fast so they can take over!!!! |
| Posted by: Kojo Chomock4440 2007-03-04 14:26 |
| #11 We have been discussion European demographics for some years now on the Burg. Most people think that Islam is a religion, but it is an ideology, using religion as a tool for the Just Plain Joes to get the ideology on. Dave D. brings us to the heart of the matter: the issue of the existance of the Moderate Muslim™. If he/she exists, why don't they speak up? If it is intimidation, why is society allowing extremists to intimidate the Moderates? Even the President believed or voiced the existance or the hope of the existance of the Moderate Muslim™. By framing Islam in the cloak of a religion, decent folks are very reluctant to attack it, so terrorists can keep pushing and taking ground by waving the religious discrimination card. Well, it's been 5 years+ since 9-11 and the Moderate Muslims™ are pretty quiet, so that says something there. Based upon all this history since 9-11, I think that the existance of the Moderate Muslim™ is a myth, and is preventing society from dealing with the issues that are necessary for our survival. ExJAG: thanks for the research. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2007-03-04 13:57 |
| #10 Thanks exJAG, looks like good stuff. I'll check it out. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2007-03-04 11:32 |
| #9 Have more babies and have a backbone and you might win. |
| Posted by: Jesing Ebbease3087 2007-03-04 10:43 |
#8 This is not a religious issue so much as a demographic one. One sentence from a very interesting articleThe birthrate of Muslims being three to four times higher than that of non-Muslims, the proportion of children, teenagers, and young adults in urban France is not 5-11 percent but a very impressive 33 percent or so. And if we see oil revenues start to decline, there could be lots more immigrants adding to the mix. I have no doubt there will be significant tribal violence in Europe at some point in the next two decades. Whether it results in Islamic dominance I doubt. But not because they won't try. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-03-04 10:43 |
| #7 most dominant? Hard to take an article seriously if the author and editors are that ignorant. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-03-04 10:31 |
| #6 Dave, I don't have the links offhand, but when I get a chance I'll dig 'em up. I did some informal research myself, if you'd like to give it try. First, I looked up all 56 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the UN's jihad bloc. Then I looked up the religious distribution for each countries' population, using the CIA World Factbook. Then correlate it with what you know from Rantburg U. about a countries' "jihad index." It's not a precise analysis, but I did a long blog post on my findings here, if you'd like to read more. |
| Posted by: exJAG 2007-03-04 10:21 |
| #5 "...studies have shown that a Muslim population of 10-15% is all it takes to fuel perpetual low-intensity jihad." exJAG, do you have links to any of these? I ask because I've been suspecting more and more that what we take to be so-called "moderate Muslims" are merely Muslims who are vastly outnumbered by the non-Muslims in the societies they live in (such as in the USA), and need to keep a low profile to avoid conflict; but once their numbers reach some critical mass, they quickly turn un-moderate. Any sources would be appreciated. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2007-03-04 09:35 |
| #4 nd from the standpoint of pervading public consciousness and driving policy, Islam is already Europe's dominant religion. exJAG is exactly right. trailing wife: I pray you are right too. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-03-04 08:07 |
| #3 There was an article or two here not long ago about the quietly explosive growth of American-style evangelical Christianity in Western Europe -- quite under the radar because Europeans count only their traditional churches in fading opposition to believing Muslims. I think the stories were about the situations in the Netherlands and England, where it's the young people who are turning away from the fancy church buildings and toward a living faith, choosing to spend their weekends praying together rather than getting drunk at clubs. A separate stream of Christian faith apparently is growing there with the increasing number of Christian refugees from Muslim oppression in Africa, the Middle East and key bits of Asia. (That traditional 20% of Palestinian Christians has fallen to something like 6% in a generation -- all those people had to go somewhere, ditto Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, etc). |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-03-04 05:06 |
| #2 Ye, so? |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-03-04 03:30 |
| #1 "a British government-sponsored think tank projected that Muslims would be the majority population of Germany by 2046." Whaaa? I don't think so. Germany's population is 82 million, which includes 3 million Turks, by far its largest group of Muslims. Besides, other studies have shown that a Muslim population of 10-15% is all it takes to fuel perpetual low-intensity jihad. And from the standpoint of pervading public consciousness and driving policy, Islam is already Europe's dominant religion. |
| Posted by: exJAG 2007-03-04 00:52 |