The Tyranny of Numbers: On ‘Europe’s Muslim Future’

The following is a response to Eric Kaufmann’s article ‘Europe’s Muslim Future’, which appeared the April 2010 issue of Prospect (issue 169).

The demographic threat of Europe’s growing Muslim population to its culture and identity is a dog-whistle trope in the many contemporary debates about Muslims, immigration, integration and multiculturalism: barely audible at mainstream frequencies, it nevertheless possesses a shrill power to to conjure up from the submerged depths of Europe’s collective unconscious all sorts of phantoms and fantasies about the Muslim ‘Other’. So Eric Kaufmann’s careful scrutiny and forensic demolition of the ‘Eurabian’ claims in April’s issue of Prospect was entirely welcome. Such claims invariably prey on ignorance and fear and wither when exposed to the cold light of fact and the illumination of rational analysis.