Mark Steyn Responds On France/Europe's Birth Decline Challenge - Read This For A Wake-Up Call

I'm just about finished with America Alone - The End Of The World As We Know It by Mark Steyn. This is a great serious read, funny as well, the main theme is much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. Mark Steyn believes that birth rates in Europe are such that in a very, very short time the Continent's Muslim immigrants will outnumber the indigenous populations of Spanish, French, Dutch and so on—and that this is not a good thing. What really matters though is why this is happening. Steyn believes that this demographic decline (in which nominally Christian Europeans have negative birth rates and Muslim immigrants have positive ones) is joined with economic stagnation due to welfare-state policies and spiritual malaise due to rampant secularism to produce nothing short of doom for much of the Old World. As he writes: “By 2050, 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles.”

Yowsa. Steyn responds when challenged on the DECLINE of birthrates in France:

Au contraire, I think France’s rising fertility rate is confirmation of my thesis – that native Europeans have given up breeding and Islam is inheriting the Continent by default. If that’s the case, then as Muslims increase as a percentage of the population so that country’s fertility rate will improve.

Do Muslims generally correlate with healthy birth rates in Europe? Yes. The only nations on the continent breeding at replacement rate are Turkey, Azerbaijan and Albania.

Do significant minorities of Muslims improve fertility rates? Yes. Of all those Continental nations below replacement-rate fertility, the top breeders are the Macedonians, whose population is 30% Muslim, which happens to be the largest Muslim minority in a European nation. [I’ve excluded war-ravaged Bosnia from the analysis, as, pace Derbyshire, rubble causes (statistical) trouble.]

Well, okay, forget Macedonia and stick to western Europe.

Which country has the healthiest fertility rate? France.

Which country has the most Muslims? France.

Which country has the second healthiest fertility rate on the western end of the Continent? Denmark.

Which country has the second largest proportion of Muslims? Denmark.

Get the picture? Take France and its neighbors and rank them in order of healthiest fertility rates (2005 official Eurostat figures):

1) France
2) Netherlands
3) Belgium
4) Switzerland
5) Austria
6) Germany
7) Italy
8) Spain

Now rank them in order of highest proportion of Muslims (no central source, but compiled from national data, European Muslim groups, UN and State Dept figures):

1) France
2) Netherlands
3) Belgium
4) Switzerland
5) Austria
6) Germany
7) Italy
8) Spain

Hmm.