“Europe’s Mosque Hysteria”

A sober and insightful discussion of Europe’s “Muslim Problem” and the real significance of current demographic trends. 

The comparison of Europe’s problems to the USA’s social and racial unrest during the 1960s is particularly intriguing.

Europe’s Mosque Hysteria by Martin Walker (Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2006)

There is nothing ineluctable about any clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Current demographic trends are not immutable, and it would be foolish to extrapolate from them a spurious forecast about Muslim majorities in Europe. That the renewed encounter between Europe and its Islamic minorities will result in terrorism or sectarian and ethnic tensions is not foreordained, and a white backlash is by no means inevitable. But the clear prospect that these poisonous predictions could be realized may itself become the antidote. The countries of Europe and their Islamic minorities have had a series of awful warnings, similar to those in the United States in the 1960s. The American response to the civil rights movement is an example to Europe of how open, liberal democracies may address the problems of Islamic immigration and mobilize public opinion and public policy to resolve them. It will not be easy, and the task will endure for generations, at constant risk of being derailed by spasmodic riots and terrorist outrages. But the alternatives are worse.