Islam in Europe: Fear of a Muslim Europe?

die Moslems kommen!

Could Switzerland go from 4% to 72% Muslim in less than four decades? A Swiss anti-immigration (some say anti-Muslim) group thinks so, and has run ads in major Swiss newspapers with ominious charts warning of the possibility. “We think this advert is positive,” says Roman Jággi, spokesman for the Swiss People’s Party (who supports the ad but denies involvement). The group has also published literature showing the church tower of Zurich’s famous Grossm∏nster replaced by a minaret with the accompanying words, “It’s a Question of Time.” Muslim and anti-racist groups are fighting back with a ten-day campaign to reach out to non-Muslims and counter the takeover claims with statistics from the Swiss Federal Statistics Bureau showing that Muslim birth rates are no different than for other Swiss. This isn’t the first time that groups have made this claim about the growing European Muslim population – such fears have been used most recently to push back against a possible admittance of Turkey to the European Union. And right-wing activists in Italy, the Netherlands (remember Pim Fortuyn?), France, and other European countries have been ringing the same alarm bells. Quotes by people like Islamic history scholar Bernard Lewis, who say that Europe will be a Muslim continent by the end of the century, and Pat “Islam has begun to reconquer Europe” Buchanan feed the flames as well. Despite their strong reaction to right-wing efforts to discredit them, European Muslims are becoming increasingly comfortable with their fusion identity. And with Tariq Ramadan (the scholar most noted for his work “To Be A European Muslim“) now denied entry into the US, he has a chance to continue his efforts to better articulate it.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.