Many thanks to Anton for translating the following essay from the Basler Zeitung:
The Muslim share of the European population is rising inexorably without integration
Arab refugees are changing Europe — not the other way around.
by Bassam Tibi
April 5, 2018May we talk freely about the consequences of Islamic immigration to Europe without censorship or self-censorship? Is it possible and permissible to raise a contradiction — by reference to three world-renowned experts — Bernard Lewis, Bat Ye’or and Walter Laqueur — against the ruling narrative in a substantive debate? These three thinkers represent the thesis of a future Eurabia in Europe. Finally, can conclusions be drawn from statistics that predict an increasing Arab-Islamic share of the resident population of Europe?
Among the limitations imposed by the prevailing narrative of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and of science in relation to the pending issue is the charge of Islamophobia. This term was forged in Iran in the early 1980s to stifle any critical discussion of Islam and Islamism; it was exploited as a reproach and taken over by the left. The French writer Pascal Bruckner argues against this trend. He speaks of a fictional Islamophobia whose central victims are those who do not join in the lamented attempt to make the theme of “Islamic immigration and its consequences” taboo.
Demographic trend
Under the title “Islamic immigration and its consequences,” I have published a book that is kept secret by all German-speaking media. I belong among the victims. Arguments can now be defamed — but it is more effective to silence them through the media. What about the statistics?
At the beginning of this century, in 2004, the mentioned restriction of the freedom of speech and of science in relation to our topic was not yet as strong as it is today. The daily newspaper Die Welt published an interview with the Princeton historian Bernard Lewis on July 28, 2004 entitled “Europe will be Islamic at the end of the 21st century”. In the same year, in an article published in the US weekly magazine Weekly Standard (issue 4/2004) by Financial Times editor Christopher Caldwell coined the term “Islamic Europe”.
A year later, the Egyptian-born Jewish author Bat Ye’or published the much acclaimed book Eurabia in the United States. In it she speaks of a massive demographic and cultural trend to transform Europe into an Islamic-Arabian entity. The prophetic statements in this book have been enormously topical since the refugee crisis of 2015/2016.
I always feel reminded of this book when I hear the immigrant “new Germans” (Herfried Münkler, political scientist) in many German cities in public transport and public places today, speaking very loudly in a primitive, disturbing Arabic — even for me as a native Arabic-speaking Syrian. Arabic is a beautiful and highly civilized world language, but only if you master it through education. Educated Arabs speak a different Arabic than I’ve heard so often on the streets in Germany since 2015 that I think I’m in an Arab country.