"Islamic persecution in Europe brings immigrants our way"

An interesting commentary by Conor Friedersdorf from Daily Bulletin. I bring parts from the article:

Is European immigration over?

Let's hope so. Europe has sent America wave upon wave of immigrants fleeing Old World catastrophes.

But lately we've become accustomed to a prosperous Europe that is itself a refuge for the economically needy and the persecuted. Asylum seekers and economic refugees flock to that continent from Africa and Asia as surely as Latin Americans flock to the United States.

So it comes as a shock that a citizen of the Netherlands, of all places, is immigrating to the United States to flee religious persecution.

This columnist hopes these victims of religious persecution fleeing Europe remain the exceptions rather than the rule. As yet the Europeans, lately subject to cartoon riots, French slum riots and terrorist bombings, can turn things around. Islamic radicals can be deported, moderate Muslims can co-exist with European liberals and millions of people now co-existing peacefully in Europe despite religious differences prove the feat is possible.

On the other hand, the next century will bring Europe a cultural and demographic shift without precedent in the modern world. Some European countries are poised to have majority Muslim populations before the end of this century. Most of those Muslims will be peace-loving and tolerant, but if the violent minority pushes hard enough to expand its intolerance, Europe's history of appeasing tyrants doesn't bode well.

In other words, the fact that a peaceful transition to an Islamized Europe is possible doesn't mean it's inevitable. We all have reason to worry that terrorists will carry out attacks, work to radicalize disaffected immigrants and empower Europe's bigoted far-right, provoking racial, religious and cultural tensions across the continent.

Or right-wing fringe groups might as easily commit the initial provocation, bringing matters to the same end. In the worst case, civil wars may send ethnic Europeans or Muslim Europeans seeking asylum in the United States, depending upon who is winning.

Even the cultural shifts likely to characterize a peacefully Islamized Europe will likely yield some immigrants for the United States. Unless Islam changes considerably over the next century, a majority Muslim population presumably means that the Netherlands won't have the world's most liberal gay marriage and adoption laws anymore, that French beaches won't be de facto topless nearly as often and that Spain's residents will hang fewer ham legs from the rafters of tapas bars while drinking less beer on the streets.

Imagine yourself as a gay man in Amsterdam watching a new Islamic majority reversing gay rights laws, or an immigrant woman in Belgium watching as Islamic lobby groups push through laws based on the Quran.

Would you immigrate or stick around to see what might happen next?