Slowly but surely, the progressive narrative within Islam is gaining ground. An increasing number of young Muslims are turning to alternative understandings of their faith. It is therefore not a given that an increase in the Canadian Muslim population will automatically usher in an age of Islamic radicalism in Canada, or that democratic values will be supplanted by a theocracy. The European experience in fact indicates the opposite: secular centre-left and centre-right members of the community have succeeded overwhelmingly, while Islamists have failed to win even in constituencies where Muslims form large voting groups.
In Denmark, for example, four Muslims were recently elected: two women and two men, of Turkish, Kurdish, Palestinian and Pakistani extraction—all of them secularists. In contrast, all the Islamist candidates lost. In Britain, the first Muslim MP was elected in Glasgow in 1992, and several more have since been elected to the Commons; not one of them was from the Islamist camp. The same is true in France, Germany and Scandinavia. So where is the evidence that if Muslims doubled or tripled in population size, they would not embrace the values of Rousseau or Locke?
Source: Macleans (English) h/t Ali Eteraz (English)
