Secularization enables the growth of Islam.

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My "Muslims make up 4.5% of Western Europe's population" figure came from Foreign Policy magazine.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... s?page=0,1

Vaisse, in turn, got the statistic NIC report Global Trends in 2025: A Transformed World.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 03 Sep 2010, 9:41 pm, edited 5 times in total.

The title and OP of this thread assume that Islam is inherently worse than Christianity. As an atheist, I think both are equally obsolete and idealogically damaging.

Last edited by KaiG on 03 Sep 2010, 9:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And very pertinent to that fact - they link to a BBC page on Europe. In the BBC's statistics they include Turkey as part of Europe as well as countries with large Muslim populations like Kosovo and Albania.

I suppose if Turkey is included, which has a population of 77 million, that would be able to have all of the 52 million of your link's estimate, with the implication that there would be greater than or equal to 25 million denizens of Turkey who aren't meeting the qualification for the statistic.

My mistake - the Snopes writers must not have been including Turkey.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4385768.stm <--- Snope link

Using this link the Muslim population in the countries they have stats for is 41.3158 million (excluding Turkey) and I suppose they conclude that about an additional 10 million for the European states they don't count would be "reasonable".

In the millions

22 (Albania) + 0.339 (Austria) + 0.4 (Belgium) + 1.5 (Bosnia-Hercegovina ) + 0.27 (Denmark) + 6 (France) + 3 (Germany) + 0.825 (Italy) + 0.63 (Macedonia') + 0.945 (Netherlands) + 0.405 (Serbia and Montenegro ) + 1.8 (Kosovo) + 1 (Spain) + 0.3 (Sweden) + 0.3018 (Switzerland) + 1.6 (UK) = 41.3158

I'll admit Turkey has grown quite a bit since 2005 or the CIA world fact book is using markedly different methodologies than the BBC (their figure is closer to your 77 million than the BBC's 68.7 million figure for Turkey's population).

With Turkey added (BBC lists 68 million Muslims), the number of Muslims in Europe increases (using the 2005 numbers) to 89.5158 million Muslims.

I probably should be rounding these numbers so as to not give a false sense of precision, I'll get around to it later.

If I'm not severely screwing up the concept of significant figures, I'd say the no-Turkey Muslim population for the European states measured is approximately 41 million and after turkey it rises to approximately 90 million.

@ the number jumble above: Adding a predominantly Muslim nation to "Europe" will of course change the number of Muslims in "Europe", but as "Europe" no longer seems to be the same area it traditionally was, maybe we should go right ahead and start adding big chunks of the Near East to it to make the number even bigger.

Regardless, none of those numbers mean that Islam is taking over in Europe, nor is it likely to. People who are disillusioned with Christianity are hardly likely to seek solace in a broadly similar monotheistic Abrahamic religion with similar (and different) restrictions/rules and so forth.

I was pondering this question when I passed a local Halal butchers, and it occurred to me that large numbers of people in the west think that Halal butchery is inhumane. Would these people agree to Islamic rule, which might well involve an overall tendency towards Halal methods?

Likewise there are far too many people who would resist (with force no less) any move towards the more oppressive aspects of Islam (in a worse case scenario compulsory beards, no flying of kites, burkhas etc.) which includes a substantial Sikh population. From experience (and historically speaking), Sikhs HATE Muslims more than any member of the BNP or Combat18 does. Granted they wouldn't have an issue with the beard thing, but its unlikely that any area of Europe with a substantial Sikh population is going to go gently unto Islam. They vote as well. Likewise other religious groups will no doubt resist Islamic influence.

I could go on. How about the fact that Government sponsored secularisation is likely to stay secularised, not be replaced by Islamic concepts? How about the fact that a change over to Islamic "rule" would inevitably require an almost "Fahrenheit 451" level of rule to remove unislamic materials and behaviour, which would inevitably be resisted?

Its not going to happen. stop panicking. The West enjoys too many things that are UnIslamic to ever change over. (Kissing in public, drinking, drinking more, not stoning people to death for bugger all, not state-sponsoring rape/murder, more drinking, pig-products, arranged marriages, female circumcision, hatred of homosexuality...) All these things and more appear in islamic nations, and the greater part of them are not ever going to be popular choices in a western nation.

I read all this Islamophobic BS and I get this urge to shout ALLAH AKBAR! Now where did I put that suicide vest....?

Ah cool.

So what did 'arboreal' mean?

Treelike........ ^

Stand in the same place for a long time?

are you kidding me, that got a laugh out of me
what if the roles where reversed and christianity was made a law that everyone had to follow? would you be for that. personally i cant stand any religion including islam but i doubt its some conspiracy by muslims to enforce there religious laws

Tree-dwelling, not treelike.

You left out "...some more drinking, no female circumcision, drinking again to get rid of the image of female circumcision..."

Too busy drinking.

But yeah, my partner reminded me of that particularly grotesque and barbaric concept just after I posted.

No, that has too much of a bad potential also and has been done in the past anyway. It's historically as bad of an idea as setting up a government for people like Stalin to move into.