Chapter VI: ISLAMISM IN EUROPE

The Main Enemy: Islamism
Chapter VI: Islamism in Europe

The rise of Radical Islam in Europe, and especially Western Europe, is closely tied to the explosive growth of the Moslem immigrant populations in the continent.

While the efforts to establish Islamist organizations and networks, such as those of the Moslem Brotherhood under Said Ramadan (1926-1995), predated the waves of Moslem immigration in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the massive numbers of new immigrants, more often than not concentrated in compact Moslem ghettoes, that created the ideal conditions for spreading Islamist ideology.

An understanding of the radicalization problem therefore necessitates a brief discussion of the Moslem immigration and consequent population explosion phenomenon in Europe.

The Moslem Population Explosion[1]
Establishing even the basic facts about Europe‘s Moslem populations is an arduous task because most European governments, with the notable exception of the British one, seemingly as a matter of principle, avoid collecting or publishing most relevant data of an ethnic or religious character.

Nonetheless, using a variety of sources it is possible to establish credible approximations of both the absolute numbers and fertility rates of Europe‘s Moslems.[2]

What is beyond dispute is that in the past half a century or so the Moslem population in Western Europe has exploded from less than a quarter million in the early 1950s, to between 15 and 20 million today.

While that still represents only three to four percent of the EU-27 (497 million), it is a rapidly growing population that has also become progressively radicalized. This has led to various speculations about the implications of this trend by governments and various experts. 

Most EU governments have avoided openly debating the issue, except for rhetorical flourishes about the need to integrate the Moslem minority, and have focused instead on its implications for terrorism.

Demographers and other experts, on the other hand, have conjured up the "Islamization" of Europe in the long term or, conversely, the possibility that Moslem birth rates will fall in line with the native ones over time and bring about a stable balance.[3]

Relatively little attention has been paid to the likelihood that the burgeoning Moslem communities, if radicalized and unintegrated, could have a dramatic impact on political stability in Western Europe long before "Islamization" takes place. 

To understand the potential for such an outcome, it is important to first come to terms with some of the essential characteristics of the demographic momentum and the nature of the ongoing radicalization process of European Moslems.

Perhaps the first thing that needs to be pointed out is that discussions of whether or not Moslems will become the majority of the population in Europe by the end of the twenty-first century, are largely irrelevant for political purposes.

However, the possibility that radicalized Moslems who reject the European secular democratic order could become a dominant demographic factor among key age cohorts in twenty years or so is of huge political consequence. And despite the lack of definitive data, there are compelling reasons to believe that this could indeed happen.

As already mentioned, most European governments, except Great Britain, do not provide statistics on either Moslem fertility rates or total populations. Nonetheless, available data, however incomplete, shows beyond much doubt that the Moslems are dramatically younger as a group, with fertility rates that are two and even three times higher than those of native Europeans, and are also growing fast on account of legal and illegal immigration.

All three of these growth factors will be examined below in order to estimate the approximate rate of increase of the Moslem population.

Official British statistics from the 2001 UK census show, for instance, that 34 percent of the estimated Moslem population of 1.6 million was under 16 years of age, compared to approximately 20 percent of the Christians, and more than 70 percent of the former were under 34 years old, compared to 40 percent of the latter.

Less than 5 percent of the Moslems were aged 65 and over, compared to 20 percent for the Christians.[4] Overall, while the average age for Moslems in the United Kingdom is under 27 years, it was 38 for the white population in 2001 and likely to have reached 40 by 2007.[5] The same or worse ratio is likely to obtain in most of the other large EU members, such as Germany, Italy and Spain, all of which have significantly lower birthrates than Britain.

The youthful and more fecund Moslem population, coupled with a tradition of getting married young, accounts for dramatically higher growth rates.[6] Though actual TFR (Total Fertility Rate) numbers are not published, it is a fair assumption that they are high, probably between 2.5 and 3. This could be deduced both from the growth numbers for Moslems in some British towns that are available and by the size of the average Moslem household, reported to be 4.9 in 1991.[7]

In the West Yorkshire town of Bradford in northern England, for instance, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Moslem population increased from 47,430 and 13,300 in 1991, to 69,121 and 21,000 in 2001, or 46 percent and 59 percent respectively in just ten years.[8] The rapid increase of the Moslem population in Bradford and many other English towns was accompanied by a decrease of the white population by 23,105 out of a 1991 population of 392,000.

As a result, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi share of the total population grew to more than 20 percent, but to a third of the student population and a probable majority of the 0-to- 4 cohort in 2001. This, of course, means that the 16-to-20 year-old cohort in Bradford is likely to be majority Moslem already in the year 2017. If the Moslem populations experience a similar rate of growth between 2001 and 2011, it is likely that they could make a majority of the under-18 years of age cohort in Bradford already by the time of the next census in 2011.

Very similar fertility rates are reported in France, where according to figures for 1999 provided by the French statistical agency INSEE, the main Moslem national groups had birth rates as follows: Algerians – 2.57, Moroccans – 2.97, Tunisians – 2.90, Turks – 3.21.[9] The last figure is probably indicative also of the fertility of the large number of Turks in Germany and the Netherlands, who have very similar socioeconomic backgrounds to their French co-nationals.[10]

Concrete evidence of the greater fertility of German Moslems, the majority of whom are Turks, is provided by the fact that in 2005 approximately 10 percent of the 685,795 babies born in Germany had Moslem parents, even though Moslems make up only 4 percent of the overall population.[11]

By the same token, the fertility rates of the Maghreb nationals in France should not be dramatically different from those of the sizable Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian diasporas in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Overall, the probable European Moslem TFR of between 2.50 and 3.00 will result in natural increase of the Moslem population of approximately 1.5 to 2 percent per annum, equal to between 225,000 and 300,000 if the lower figure of 15 million is used as a base line, or between 300,000 and 400,000 if the higher 20 million figure is used.

This compares to the EU average TFR of 1.5 which, as mentioned, leads to a loss of two and a quarter million people per year in the EU.

Chain Migration and Political Asylum
The second factor contributing to non-native population increase in Europe has traditionally been legal immigration. There have been two waves of post-WWII large-scale Moslem influx into Europe: "post-colonial" and "guest worker" immigration.

The first involved the former citizens of the colonial possessions of Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and other European nations who qualified for immigration. This is how large numbers of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Algeria, Indonesia, and elsewhere settled in Europe in the aftermath of de-colonization.

Then, as European economies recovered from wartime devastation and went into "economic miracle" overdrive, millions of "guest workers" were recruited as cheap labor for the booming economies of Western Europe in the 1950s and beyond. These two waves of immigration set the stage for today’s large Moslem diaspora communities. 

Large-scale legal immigration was essentially terminated in most of Western Europe after the 1973 oil embargo and the resulting economic crisis, but it was replaced over time by a different form of legal immigration that is much more difficult to control and one that has been widely used and abused by Moslems to gain entry into Europe.

Demographers have coined a special term for it: "chain migration." Basically, it was first instituted in most Western European countries as a humanitarian family reunification measure for the mostly single immigrants of the initial waves.

In the meantime, as immigration for economic reasons has fallen off drastically, chain migration has become the most important method of gaining legal entry into the EU. The most commonly used approach is arranged or forced marriages, where European-born individuals are married off to partners back in the home country.

Not only is the new bride or bridegroom allowed to join their spouse in Europe, but very often the entire family follows shortly, resulting in four, five, and even more new immigrants. With the exception of Hindus and Sikhs, the vast majority of arranged marriages are practiced by Moslems.

One German source estimates, for instance, that up to eighty percent of Moslem girls in a Hamburg Turkish community enter into enforced marriage,[12] while in the United Kingdom sixty-seven percent of girls and women between the age of sixteen and thirty-four are reported to have their marriages arranged by their parents.

Overall, various studies have shown that a clear majority of new immigrants from outside of Europe now arrive through family reunification. In the United Kingdom, which accounts for some ten percent of the total EU Moslem population, for example, there were close to fifty thousand new arrivals via spousal migration in 2001, most of whom were Moslems.[13]

Moslem chain migration in all of the EU thus could be as high as half a million per annum, a figure that exceeds the natural population increase.

Arranged or forced marriages (often to first cousins or nieces of one’s extended family) have yet another important effect in that they act as a major barrier to assimilation in European society.

As political philosopher Francis Fukuyama has argued and American immigration experience confirms, rates of marriage outside of one’s group "correlate strongly with both assimilation and upward mobility."[14] By controlling and limiting their children’s marriage choices, Moslem parents in Europe effectively undermine their chances for integration and economic betterment, at a significant cost to society.[15]

The final quasi-legal immigration category that contributes significantly to the growth of EU’s Moslem populations is political asylum.

Granting political asylum to individuals persecuted in their native lands for the political views they hold is, of course, a noble and time-honored tradition of civilized nations. Unfortunately, European societies have allowed the asylum right to be widely abused by millions that have no legitimate claim to it and use it simply as another convenient way of getting in.

Indeed, it is very difficult to draw a precise line between political asylum seekers and illegal immigrants because a majority of the former request asylum only after they have been apprehended for illegal entry. This has made a mockery out of a key humanitarian principle and has resulted in huge numbers of bogus claimants, which cannot but breed contempt for a democratic system that is unable or unwilling to enforce its laws.

The total number of asylum applicants in the EU is estimated at 6.6 million since 1980, which is about the same as the number of legal labor migrants in this period.[16]

While most asylum claims are quickly rejected as without merit, very few refugees are ever deported, despite periodic half­hearted efforts to crack down on the practice. Following the large spike in asylum requests during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, new claims were running at a steady rate of about 350,000 per year in 2003.[17]

After the settlement of the Balkan conflicts and the return home of most Bosnian and Kosovo refugees, current asylum seekers are mostly Moslems from North Africa and the Middle East. Asylum thus continues to be, in the words of British demographer D.A. Coleman, a "process of mass population movement as never intended."

Illegal Immigration
Finally, the Moslem populations in Europe are augmented by large-scale illegal immigration, which may be the most important quantitative factor presently.

Exact figures are not available, but various sources allow a credible estimate of both the overall number of illegal immigrants residing in Europe and the yearly flows. The estimates most often mentioned by European Union authorities are three million for the total number of illegal residents in the EU and five hundred thousand per annum in new arrivals. There are reasons to believe that both numbers represent a significant underestimation. 

There is, for example, considerable evidence that the unauthorized immigrant population in southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece) alone exceeds the three-million mark. Indeed just Spain and Greece may have had over three million illegals between them until very recently when they instituted large-scale legalization campaigns.[18] Italy, France, and Portugal have at least another million and a half immigrants between them.[19] Northern Europe with Germany, Great Britain, and a few others with significant Moslem populations almost certainly host another three million or so, for a total of six million.[20]

It is a mistake, however, to consider the illegal immigrant population as a static factor. Europe‘s experience in dealing with it in the past two decades has shown that it fluctuates widely in response to government policy.

It declines temporarily after sizable amnesties, only to ramp up again shortly afterwards. In fact, it could be argued that the demonstrable failure by EU member states to enforce deportation laws on the books, combined with frequent amnesties, have the effect of encouraging illegal immigration by showing potential immigrants that the chances of being deported, even if caught, are minimal, while the prospects of acquiring legal status in a relatively short time are very good indeed.[21]

This is demonstrated, for instance, by the fact that Spain decided to conduct another large-scale (800,000) amnesty in 2005 after legalizing 575,000 illegals only two years before.  Following the 2005 amnesty the number of illegals arriving in the Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of Africa in 2006 promptly increased six-fold, to 31,000.   

Similarly, despite legalizing 1.5 million undocumented immigrants in the past three years, Italy still has more than a million as of 2007. 

Another factor contributing to the current magnitude of illegal immigration is the fact that it is fairly easy. While attempts to gain entry in the EU by would-be immigrants often do end tragically on the high seas and elsewhere as regularly showcased by the media, such cases are the exception and not the rule. According to EU officials, eighty percent of the undocumented immigrants arrive on valid tourist visas but fail to return.

Given the very large size of the illegal immigrant contingent present, it is very likely that the estimated half a million new arrivals per year is unrealistically low. Judging by the number of illegals apprehended by border controls in various European countries, the actual influx is at least twice as large.

Thus in any given year Turkish authorities arrest upwards of one hundred thousand Europe-bound migrants, as do the Greeks, whose unregistered population has exploded to nearly a million since the early 1990s. There are higher figures still from the main immigrant destinations of Italy and Spain. The short Italian border with Slovenia, for example, is alone the site of up to forty thousand arrests per year, according to the attorney-general of Trieste.

And, as is well known, those apprehended usually represent no more than ten to twenty percent of those who make it through.

The magnitude of the illegal immigration problem is also revealed by some indirect but telling evidence. For the statistically average country, the percentage of people leaving on account of emigration every year stands at two percent, yet for the Moslem southern Mediterranean and the Maghreb the rate is five percent, or twelve million people.  Illegal Moroccan immigrants in Spain alone are estimated to number 500,000, or 1.5 percent of Morocco‘s entire population of 30 million.

Unlike political asylum, which is mostly a Moslem affair, illegal immigration to Europe attracts people from every corner of the world, from China to Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa. Nonetheless, after the drying up of Eastern Europe as a major source of undocumented immigrants to the EU in the past few years, Moslems now make up a clear majority of the yearly influx of over a million. 

All in all, natural increase, chain migration, asylum seekers, and illegal immigration easily contribute well over a million to the growth of the EU Moslem population every year, and the actual figure is probably considerably higher.

The Moslem population is thus set to increase by at least 50 percent every decade. It will likely double from its 2001 level by 2015 and double again by 2030.[22]

By that year, and possibly earlier, the majority of young people in most large European urban centers will be Moslems.

A fairly realistic projection of the Moslem population based on reliable figures could be put together for Great Britain. The 2001 British census listed the Moslem population at 1.591 million. It was widely assumed at the time that this figure did not include an estimated four hundred thousand illegal immigrants and asylum applicants who were not counted and would have raised the total to two million. 

Although no question about religion was asked in the 1991 census, there are a number of studies available that estimated the Moslem population at that time, which could be used to calculate both the overall size and the rate of population increase between the two censuses. Three well-known scholarly studies estimate the number of Moslems in Great Britain in 1991 to have been 690,000, 936,000 and 1,000,000 respectively.[23]

To reach 1.59 million Moslems in 2001 from these figures, the population growth rate would have to have been approximately 130 percent, 62 percent, and 59 percent respectively. If even the lowest of these growth rates had continued after 2001, an assumption in line with some of the recorded increases in cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, and Bradford, we can expect a 2011 British Moslem population of 2.77 million.

Accounting for even a modest addition to the illegal population since 2001, a virtual certainty, could easily bring this figure to three million or more. Sound reasons exist, therefore, to believe that the UK Moslem population has nearly doubled in the last ten years.

The Urban Dimension
Perhaps the most significant and politically salient characteristic of the Moslem diaspora populations in Western Europe is the fact that they are overwhelmingly urban and tend to be concentrated in the largest cities of the region.  In stark contrast, the native Moslem populations in Eastern Europe are primarily rural.

Ths heavy concentration of the young Moslem populations in the key political, economic and cultural centers of Western Europe has the potential of endowing them with political and economic clout that may exceed their numbers when compared with those of the ageing and shrinking native cohorts.

As is the case with Moslems in Europe generally, reliable data on urban Moslem communities has been notoriously difficult to find. Recently this has started to change as evidence of their burgeoning numbers and activism can no longer be easily disregarded, and European Union and local authorities have begun studying the community more systematically.

One such large-scale effort called Moslems in EU Cities has been undertaken by EUMAP (EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program) and will research the Moslem communities in eleven large European cities.

Although the project is in its infancy, it has already released some useful data on the size of the Moslem communities in various European cities as well as Moslem-dominated city districts and neighborhoods. A growing number of municipal data sets and private information sources and blogs have also facilitated research on the subject.  One such is the website Islam in Europe.

A quick look at the data reveals that many of the important European urban centers already have large and rapidly growing Moslem populations that significantly exceed their share of the general country population as a whole.

As a general rule, a Moslem share of the population of 15 percent or so, as discussed earlier in the case of Bradford, England, means that the school-age cohort in that city is at least a quarter Moslem and could be expected to become a majority in the under-18 cohort in ten to fifteen years. Large cities that have already exceeded that level include the following:

Marseille, France – 25% Moslem population (200,000 out of 800,000)

Amsterdam, Holland – 24% (180,000 out of 750,000)

Malmo, Sweden – 20% (50,000 out of 250,000)

Stockholm, Sweden – 20% (155,000 out of 750,000)

Brussels, Belgium – 17-20% (160,000-220,000 out of 1 million)

London, England – 17% (1.3 million out of 7.5 million)

Moscow, Russia – 16%-20% (160,000-220,000 out of 10-12 million.

Numerous other cities are following closely behind:

The Hague – 14.2% (67,896 out of 475,580)

Rotterdam – 13% (80,000 out of 600,000)

Utrecht – 13.2% (38,300 out of 289,000)

Birmingham – 14.3% (139,771 out of)

Rotterdam – 13% (38,300 out of 289,000)

Copenhagen – 12.6% (63,000 out of 500,000)

Lyon – 12% (150,000 out of 1.2 million)

Cologne – 12% (120,000 out of 1,350,000)

Frankfurt – 12% (80,000 out of 662,000)

There are further a number of big European cities that have large concentrations of Moslems in specific parts of the city or else in the greater city or region. Paris proper, for instance, has only 7.4 percent Moslems (155,000 out of 2.1 million) within its city limits, but the greater Paris region (Ile-de-France) is host to 1.37 million, or nearly a quarter of all French Moslems.[24]

Other large cities like Berlin and Hamburg have compact Moslem districts (Kreuzberg, Neukőln, St. Pauli, Billstedt).

Several developments seem to accompany the ever greater numbers of Moslems in European urban areas. Growing concentrations of Moslems in certain city districts often result in the exodus of native inhabitants and thus even greater concentrations until the area becomes predominantly Moslem.

Frequently, this eventually leads to the ghettoization of the neighborhood and the development of Moslem "parallel societies" that are only marginally connected to the mainstream society outside. In extreme cases, such districts could be transformed into crime-ridden, Moslem ghettoes and "no go" areas for outsiders, including law enforcement. 

Major demographic shifts such as the ones described above are, of course, nothing new in history, although they are usually the result of wars and conquests, rather than the reluctance of societies to have babies.

Nor is the replacement of one dominant culture or ethnic group with another on account of a new demographic balance necessarily a cause for concern per se- unless, of course, that new culture is dominated by a hate-filled, obscurantist, and inherently violent creed that does not intend to coexist peacefully with others.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of intolerant ideology that growing numbers of European Moslems are embracing, to the point of making Radical Islam the dominant idiom in the Moslem community.

The Radicalization of European Islam 
How did this socio-political phenomenon come about? And how did this come about in a society that prides itself on being the embodiment of tolerance, compassion and social, cohesion?

The radicalization of European Moslems was the result of a combination of political, economic, and social factors and policies and their intended and unintended consequences, both within and without the European context.

The stage was probably first set by the stubborn, if totally unrealistic, belief of European governments that the millions of Moslem "guest workers" they imported as cheap labor were indeed guests and were sooner or later going to go home voluntarily. Thus, for many years, no European government entertained the possibility of long-term settlement for the immigrants nor took even elementary acculturation and assimilation measures.

On the contrary, the few policies that concerned the immigrants were seemingly designed to remind them that they were indeed foreign citizens and could not expect to be integrated into their host societies.

Turkish state officials, for example, were given monopoly over the religious institutions and education of Turkish gastarbeiter in Germany on the assumption that Islam was a foreign religion and thus of no concern to the German government, and a similar arrangement was made by France with the Algerian government.

Things went as far as a 1982 treaty between France and Morocco obligating French judges to use Moroccan Islamic statutes in adjudicating family law cases for Moroccan immigrants. 

The same attitude coupled with European xenophobia and latent racism restricted the immigrants’ housing options to dilapidated industrial areas or public housing in large cities and preordained the emergence of Moslem ghettoes.

The ghettoization of the Moslem immigrants and their progressive isolation from mainstream European society received another major impetus from the multicultural dogmas that became the order of the day in Western Europe in the 1980s and beyond.

The "temporary" guest workers were thus encouraged to maintain their separate ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identities and organize separate sports and cultural institutions and even labor union and political organizations. Discussing assimilation was viewed as borderline racist, as was the mere mention of immigrant asocial behavior, which became a taboo subject. So did addressing the already visible failure of immigration policies, yet another victim of political correctness.[25]

No government policy, however, has had a greater and more negative effect on the immigrants’ prospects and their descent into the hell of today’s Moslem ghettoes than the "social market" policies that became the norm in the EU.

As the post-1973 oil crisis put an official end to the "economic miracle" post-war era in Europe, the welfare state policies began to impose ever greater burdens on the economy in terms of government intervention, rising payroll taxes, and minimum wages and rigid labor laws designed to protect highly paid skilled and unionized workers, while punishing the young and unskilled by making them unemployable. 

At the same time, generous welfare checks, housing benefits, child subsidies, and free health care made it economically more attractive for many to do nothing rather than take minimum wage jobs.

The implicit message European governments sent to their immigrant populations through these policies was "stay in your communities and out of sight and we’ll take care of your basic needs."  But doing nothing and living on government handouts also means a life without meaningful prospects and hope, and inevitably breeds resentment, alienation, and lawlessness.

Accordingly, those with a distinct non-European culture, like the Moslems, progressively decoupled physically and emotionally from the larger society around them. And it is in these alienated, Moslem enclaves throughout Europe that radical Islam found a fertile soil for its siren call.

This process of encapsulation, which began in earnest with the second-generation of Moslem immigrants in the 1970s, coincided with the coming of age of Radical Islam in the Middle East and South Asia and the beginning of the oil boom and windfall profits that funded it.

Islamist ideological extremism, of course, predated this period by decades in the case of the Moslem Brotherhood, and by two centuries, if one were to include Wahhabism as an ideological progenitor of modern Islamism. Nonetheless, it was in this general period that a number of important developments took place that decisively influenced the course of Islam in Europe and the West. 

The first and most important one, as already discussed in Chapter V, was the strategic alliance between Moslem Brotherhood organizational and conspiratorial skills and Saudi money, which resulted in the founding of a number of key Saudi front groups promoting radical Islam in the West and the establishment of the first Islamist networks in both Europe and North America under Ikhwan ideological tutelage.

Another important milestone was the coming to power of General Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan in 1977, enabling extremist elements to displace the more moderate pre-existing ones in the European Moslem communities. As in the case of the Ikhwan, Saudi Arabia was and is the key financial benefactor of all of them, subsidizing thousands of Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan and many Islamist institutions in Britain, from the Leicester Islamic Foundation to the Dewsbury mosque and European headquarters for the proselytizing Islamists of Tablighi Jamaat.

Two other key events were the twin shocks of the Khomeini revolution in Iran and the violent takeover of the Mecca Mosque by radical anti-establishment Wahhabis in 1979. Having been declared apostates by Khomeini and spooked by the mosque incident, yet newly endowed with virtually unlimited funds after the 1973 oil embargo, the House of Saud embarked on a major effort to export the Wahhabi creed and boost its influence in the Islamic world and in the West.

Below are just a few direct quotations from Wahhabi literature published in Saudi Arabia that is freely available in many European and American mosques:

On democracy: "democracy is the very embodiment of unbelief," and "an evil system, and we have been ordered to reject evil."

On interfaith dialogue: It is a "sinful call" because it "breaks the wall of resentment between Moslems and unbelievers."

On freedom of religion: It is forbidden, because "it allows the denial of Islam." Accepting any religion other than Islam makes you an apostate and "you should be killed, because you have denied the Koran."

On infidels: "Believers must hate them because of their religion…and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law."

On moderate Moslems: "who ever believes that Christians and Jews worship God is an infidel" and "he who casts doubt about their infidelity, leaves no doubt about his own infidelity."

On Europe: "Moslems must be protected from the barbarian culture of Europe."

All of these quotations are taken from "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques," published by Freedom House in Washington D.C.

Hidden behind such rhetoric is a well-thought-out strategy that the Wahhabis and their Moslem Brotherhood and Deobandi allies have pursued with considerable success.

It aims first to control and dominate the Moslem establishment in the various countries through a network of interlocking organizations and umbrella groups that exclude moderate Moslems like the Sufis. As a result, the Moslem communities in many European countries today are completely dominated by Islamist elements despite frequent protestations to the contrary.

The Moslem Council of Britain, for example, pretends to be a moderate umbrella group of Moslem organizations and is often called upon as an interlocutor for the government on behalf of the Moslem community. In fact, even a perfunctory look at its affiliates reveals that virtually its entire membership is made up of Wahhabi, Deobandi, Ahle Hadith, Jamiat-e-Islami, and Moslem Brotherhood groups and their spinoffs.

The same is true of Germany, where the IGD, various Saudi-sponsored groups, and the Turkish radical organization Milli Görüs (National Vision, or IGMG) completely dominate the organizational terrain in close cooperation.

Another key objective is to establish control over the local communities by controlling the mosques and related organizations and imposing the radical Wahhabi/Salafi behavioral agenda and sharia-derived prescriptions.

How successful they have been in this is quite obvious from the fact that only fifteen years ago the now-ubiquitous hijab for women was seldom seen in European Moslem communities.

Such control, once established, allows the Islamists to transform Moslem enclaves into completely separate, parallel societies with the mores of sharia de facto enforced. Often this is done with the threat or use of violence, especially with respect to women.

A 2005 French education ministry study, known as the Rapport Obin, which was suppressed by the government but leaked on the Internet, describes existing conditions in public schools near the ghettoes that are hard to reconcile with their physical location in the middle of Europe.

According to the study, Islamists known as "grand frères" (big brothers) enforce a strict Islamic dress code that prohibits make-up, dresses, and skirts. They also forbid any co-educational activities and make going to the cinema, the swimming pool, or the gym all but impossible for Moslem girls. The punishment for refusal to conform is often physical violence and beatings.

And this, says the report, is a relatively protected environment compared to what girls experience outside of school. No less disturbing is the picture the report paints of the spread of the kind of religious obscurantism that one normally associates with Wahhabi zealots.

Thus, Moslem students are said to often refuse to study Voltaire or read Madame Bovary, acknowledge even the existence of other religions, or sing, dance, draw faces or even right angles because they resemble the cross. English is hated as the "language of imperialism."[26]

Almost identical conditions in German schools, particularly in the treatment of girls, are reported by the German-Turkish sociologist Necla Kelek.

How far this separatism has proceeded could be judged by the existence of what the French euphemistically call zones sensibles. These "sensitive zones," which officially number 750 with some 4 to 5 million inhabitants, are mostly Moslem ghettoes that are increasingly beyond the writ of French law.

While the growing encapsulation of Moslem communities into "anti-societies," as some call them, is certainly a major success of the Islamists, it does not augur well for the future of their host countries.

The young people inhabiting them are increasingly uneducated, unskilled, and often not able to speak the local language properly.[27] How these people will be able to run a sophisticated modern economy when they become a majority of the labor force is an open question.

Finally, Radical Islam seeks to cultivate a pan-European Moslem identity that will overcome the numerous national, ethnic, and tribal divisions that separate European Moslems. This is indeed a tall order, but there are reasons to believe that young, radicalized Moslems are losing their loyalty to national and ethnic identities and increasingly see themselves as Moslems first and last.

Seeking to reinforce this trend, leaders of the establishment have in recent years begun to promote trans-European Moslem organizations, such as the Federation of European Islamic Organizations (FOIE), the Federation of European Moslem Youth Societies (FEMYSO), and the European Islamic Trust, among others.

Despite being controlled by well-known members of the radical Islamist alliance, some have already managed to position themselves as the genuine representatives of European Islam vis à vis Brussels.

All in all, the evidence presented here and in numerous opinion surveys and studies undertaken in the past few years prove beyond much doubt that a pervasive radicalization of Moslems is taking place throughout Western Europe.

The immediate repercussions of this troubling phenomenon are already visible in the fact that the continent is no longer just a transit point for terrorists, but has itself become a breeding ground for all manner of Islamic extremists and jihadists.

With hundreds of European born and raised extremists documented to have already taken part in terrorist activities in all the hotbeds of jihadism worldwide, this is and should be a matter of serious concern.

Frightening as terrorist activities are, though, they are unlikely by themselves to present a systemic challenge to the European order. For they are, after all, but the symptoms of the much deeper malignancy of a quasi-totalitarian Islamist ideology on the march that presents a real and vastly greater threat.

To put it simply, if the kind of radical, uncompromising and violence-prone worldview currently on display in Moslem ghettoes remains dominant among European Moslems as they become a majority of the young urban cohorts by 2025 or earlier, it is very difficult to see how Europe could continue to be governed effectively as a modern, democratic and secular polity. 

Next week:  Chapter VII – Islamism in America.

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[1]   The analysis in this section is based in part on Alex Alexiev, "Stumbling Towards Eurabia," The Journal of International Security Affairs, Number 14, Spring 2008. 

[2]   The discussion here will be limited to the Moslem "diaspora" populations in Western Europe and excludes the very different native Moslem populations in Eastern Europe. The latter number more than 30 million and are concentrated in several geographic areas such as the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Volga region in the European part of Russia.

terrorism. Demographers and other experts, on the other hand, have conjured up the "Islamization" of Europe in the long term or, conversely, the possibility that Moslem birth rates will fall in line with the native ones over time and bring about a stable balance.

[3]   This has been the favorite analytical ploy of experts who aim to minimize the possibility of conflict caused by the rapidly increasing Moslem populations. They focus strictly on the examination of fertility rates alone to the compete exclusion on the much more important factors of chain migration, family reunification, asylum policies, and illegal immigration, thus providing a completely skewed picture of the demographic trends.

[4]   See "Age and Sex Distribution: Moslem Population is Youngest," in www.statistic.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=955 . The 2001 census was the first British census that contained a question about religion, though answering it was not mandatory in England and Wales, which in the view of some may have skewed the response.

[5]   The Guardian, September 21, 2001.

[6]   According to the 2001 census, Moslems in Britain are five times more likely to be married by the age of 24 than whites.

[7]   M. Murphy, Ethnicity in the 1991 Census, Vol. 1, Table 8.3, HMSO, 1996.

[8]   "The Impact of Chain Migration on English Cities," available online HERE.

[9]   Cited in Laurent Toulemon, "La Fécondité des Immigrées: Nouvelles Données, Nouvelle Approche," Population & Sociétés, no. 400, April 2004.

[10]  This fertility rate is more than two and a half times the average German TFR of 1.34 in 2000 as reported by the German Statistical Agency (Statistisches Bundesamt). To the extent that the German TFR includes three and a half million Moslems, the birth rate of ethnic Germans is likely to be closer to 1.3.

[11]  www.focus.de/politik/deutschland_aid_52269.html

[12]  Focus, Munich, November 22, 2004. Translated by FBIS and available online HERE .

[13]  Data from the UK Home Office cited in D.A.Coleman, "Facing the 21st Century: New Developments, Continuing Problems," Paper presented at the European Population Forum, Geneva, Switzerland, January 12-14,2004, p.43.

[14]  Francis Fukuyama, "Our Foreign Legions," The Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2004.

[15]  Another negative consequence of forced and arranged marriages that is seldom openly discussed involves consanguineous marriage (marriage to first cousins), which is quite prevalent among Pakistani and other South Asian Moslems in Britain. Evidence from British health authorities indicates that such marriages put the resulting offspring at significant risk (two to five times higher than for white babies) of recessive genetic disorders such as severe hearing and visual impairment and learning deficiencies. Humayun Ansari, Infidel Within, C. Hurst &Co Publishers, London, 2004, p. 26.

[16]   D.A. Coleman, op. cit., p. 43.

[17]  Eurostat 2004, Asylum Applications, http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/portal/page?_pageid=1996,39140985

[18]  Greece accorded legal status to 700,000 undocumented immigrants by late 2004, while Spain allowed 800,000 to apply for legalization by May 2005. Despite these massive legalization numbers, one million "paperless" immigrants still remain in Spain and "a minimum of 190,000" in Greece. See "Statistical Data on Immigrants in Greece," www.mmo.gr/pdf/general/IMEPO_exec_Summary_English.pdf and www.ipsnews.org/new_nota.asp?idnews=28608.

[19]  According to the Catholic relief agency Caritas, which provides charitable services to illegal immigrants, Italy currently has at least a million illegal immigrants, while Portugal’s share is 300,000 and France is host to between 200,000 and 400,000 according to Interior Minister De Villepin. See "New Legislation Regulates Immigration," www.eiro.eurofound.eu.int/2002/09/feature/it0209103f.html .

[20]  Great Britain alone had half a million illegal immigrants in 2007, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph of October 24, 2007.

[21]  According to Greek Minister for Public Order George Voulgarakis, only eighty-three of the 70,000 to 75,000 illegal immigrants from Pakistan residing in Greece were deported in 2004, according to the English language Pakistani daily Dawn, Islamabad. See www.dawn.com , May 12, 2005.

[22]  One important consequence of the ill-conceived EU policies of mass legalization of illegal migrants is the huge impetus it provides to chain migration. It is estimated that each immigrant receiving legal status eventually brings between three and five relatives into the EU. Even if only half of the nearly 4 million immigrants legalized in the past five years were Moslems, this could mean an additional six to ten million chain migrants in just this decade.

[23]  The three studies used here are Humayun Ansari, Infidel Within, p. 41, J. Nielsen, Moslems in Western Europe, Edinburgh, 1992, and C. Peach, "Estimates of the 1991 Moslem Population of Great Britain," Exploratory Seminar on Statistics and the UK Religious Communities, University of Derby, May, 1994. 

[24]  Numbers are from EUMAP and http://islamineurope.blogspot.com .

[25]  In the 1990s Dutch political parties went as far as agreeing between themselves not to address immigration in their political campaigns. See Mark Baker, "Dutch Immigration (Part 2) – Paying the Price of Political Correctness," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 24, 2004, available at www.rferl.org .

[26]  Jean -Pierre Obin, "Les signes et manifestations d’appartenance religieuse dans les établissements scolaires," Ministère de l’Education Nationale, Paris, June 2004.

[27]  A PISA International Educational Survey found in 2005 that 15-year-old Moslem students born in Germany were unable to speak German past elementary school level. Half of them did not finish middle school, and only ten percent graduated from high school.