More on demographics (UPDATED)

More on demographics

Update:

More from the Telegraph: A fifth of European Union will be Muslim by 2050 and We need policies for integrating Europe's immigrants.


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Two recent additions to the demographic debate:


* The BBC's 'More or Less' show, which focuses on statistics, made their very own rebuttal video to the Muslim Demographics video going around. It's not as visually impressive, btw. Apparently the original video got 10 million hits and the BBC decided it was newsworthy enough. I don't think they add much to my own review of the video - whoever made it liberally misquotes and abuses facts.

The video is accompanied by explanatory articles: Welcome to Eurabia?, Debunking a YouTube hit, Disproving the Muslim Demographics sums and Does 'Muslim Demographics' abuse numbers?


If you have watched the "Muslim Demographics" video on YouTube - and many millions have - you might have wondered whether the statistics presented in it are reliable.


The seven-and-a-half minute video uses slick graphics, punctuated with dramatic music, to make some surprising claims, asserting that much of Europe will be majority Muslim in only a few decades.


So how credible are the numbers in the video?


The short answer is: not very. But the long answer is more interesting - as our crunching of the numbers illustrates.

(...)


* The Telegraph bucks the trend of the recent "there's no need to worry" type articles with one headlined: Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent.


Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.


The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain's population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe's Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys' names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.


Europe's low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society. The altered population mix has far-reaching implications for education, housing, welfare, labour, the arts and everything in between. It could have a critical impact on foreign policy: a study was submitted to the US Air Force on how America's relationship with Europe might evolve. Yet EU officials admit that these issues are not receiving the attention they deserve.


(...)


I don't think these two articles contradict each other. I think it is wrong to claim that Muslims will take over Europe through birthrate alone (*) or become anything but a bigger minority in the near future, but it is also wrong to claim that there's no problems with additional incoming immigration or the integration of Muslims already in Europe, particularly in the urban centers. It might not be worth it ratings-wise, but I'm still hoping somebody would write a balanced article on this issue

(*) Despite the belief of certain Muslim leaders to the contrary.

See also:
* Open Thread: "politically impossible" level of immigration
* Muslim Demographics - fact vs. fiction