The expansion of Islam is already well underway. But if you are thinking, “Let’s strengthen the NSA, CIA, FBI, and the armed services,” forget it. This expansion is demographic and is being carried out by ordinary Muslims, not terrorists. Nevertheless, it does have serious cultural implications.
Simply said, Muslims are out-reproducing Christians and Jews, among others. That is why some analysts already refer to Europe as “Eurabia” and why it is entirely possible that someday “USA” could stand for “United States of Allah”!
Demographers say a fertility rate of 2.11 per family is needed to maintain a population, a drop to 1.9 has never been reversed, and 1.3 is virtually impossible to reverse. As of 2007, the fertility rate in European Union countries was 1.38; in Canada, 1.6; and in the U.S., 1.6 with Latino immigrants excluded and 2.11 with them included.
Some see these statistics as foretelling the end of western civilization, others as nothing more than the kind of population change that occurred in the migration of Europeans to the Americas. If the doomsayers are engaging in hyperbole, the “not to worry” crowd are ignoring the fact that the European migration was catastrophic to Native Americans over time.
In England thirty years ago, Muslims numbered 82,000; today that number has risen to 2.5 million. And the European continent has experienced similar increases. The changes have occurred largely because of the influx of immigrants from Muslim countries to fill jobs made available by the declining population.
Muslim immigrants understandably brought their culture with them. They built mosques or converted church buildings that had been closed because of dwindling Christian congregations. They also continued their practice of praying five times a day while kneeling on prayer rugs and facing Mecca, with a special midday prayer on Fridays. And they often did so in groups rather than individually because they believe that is more meritorious. These prayer practices have created problems in the workplace; in the case of the Friday prayers, they also have disrupted the flow of traffic.
In addition, Muslims have understandably preferred their own Sharia law to European law, sought to be governed by it, and eventually have it replace the European system. The problem is, Sharia law approves of practices forbidden in western law—for example, female circumcision, male polygamy, beating insubordinate wives, cutting off the hands of thieves, and executing those who criticize the Koran. Sharia also forbids practices approved in western law—marrying someone of another faith, and women wearing western clothing in public, driving cars, and divorcing their husbands.
Muslims understandably want their children’s education to emphasize the Islamic perspective on history and science and to infuse the cultural and moral values of the Koran into every class. However, to meet this expectation would require either creating a separate education system for Muslim children or having Christian and Jewish citizens accept infidel status for their religions and abandon the western educational tradition of presenting subject information factually and maintaining objectivity in matters in which there is significant disagreement, such as religion.
It is difficult to imagine that the current expansion of Islam in North America will be any less problematic than it has been in England and the European continent. After all, North American culture, though different in some respects from European, has identical Judeo-Christian roots.
What will be the ultimate outcome of this expansion? The “not to worry” crowd has an optimistic answer—that North American Muslims will be assimilated, trade their fundamentalist views for secularism, and drop their birth rate dramatically.
It is true that such a scenario occurred in the past with immigrants from Europe and even (though more gradually) with those from Asia. But neither of those groups categorically opposed the religion of their new land; nor were they, in most cases, nearly as zealous about their own religions. Thus, the safer bet is that Muslims in North America will increase significantly in number and gain more and more influence in education and government. In time, the Muslim way will become the American way.
If and when this happens, some will say that God punished us for rejecting Him. That is a roundabout way of blaming God for our situation. A more sensible view is that God merely let the consequences of our choices occur naturally. That puts the blame where it belongs, on us.
So what choices depleted our population? One was the choice of going to war. The lives lost in the Civil War and World War II numbered 365,000 and 400,000 respectively. And if we add to these numbers the casualties of all other wars from 1775 to the present, the grand total is almost 1,200,000. Every one of those battleground deaths ended the chance to have children, grandchildren, and so on.
Two other population-reducing choices have been delaying marriage and using natural or artificial birth control methods to regulate family size. The impact of these choices is difficult to put into numbers, but it has clearly been significant.
But the most obvious and dramatic population-reducing choice has been the decision to end pregnancies by abortion. Between 1973 and 2013 there have been over 55 million abortions in the United States. That represents over 50 times the combined casualties in all the wars in our history!
The consequences of these choices are already manifest apart from the expansion of Islam. One is the decline of our scientific and technological leadership in the world. (How many talented people has abortion robbed us of?) Another is the difficulty of maintaining Social Security and Medicare, and of funding Obamacare, as America’s population continues to age. Authorities agree that there aren’t enough younger taxpayers to support the payouts to older citizens. (How many more younger taxpayers would we have today if all or most of the 55 million abortions had not occurred?)
When the expansion of Islam tips the balance of political and cultural influence, the loss of American leadership and financial stability could well be overshadowed by the forfeiture of many of the liberties we cherish—in particular, freedom of speech, assembly, and worship. And future historians will wonder how an age of sexual license produced a new age of sexual repression, and how feminists’ demand for liberation led ultimately to greater subjugation.
Such ironies will abound, and most of them will be bitter.
Copyright © by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. All rights reserved
