Ummm, about that Demographic Winter...

Do you lay awake at night in fear that scary brown Muslim people are out there, somewhere (mostly Europe), out-breeding you and your white family? Are you afraid that little Susie might be forced to wear a veil during class because the scary brown Muslim people have taken over the school board? Do you think the great cathedrals are in danger of being turned into mosques filled with ululating heathen hoardes? Well relax, you silly racist moron! As it turns out, your Demographic Winter theory is full of holes! (h/t to Buckets)

On the face of it, this seemed to bear out the ­thesis—­something of a rallying cry among anti-immigration ­activists—­that high birthrates among immigrant Muslims presage a fundamental shift in British demography. Similar developments in other European countries, where birthrates among ­native-­born women have long fallen below replacement level, have provoked considerable anxiety about the future of Europe’s traditionally Christian culture. Princeton professor emeritus Bernard Lewis, a leading authority on Islamic history, suggested in 2004 that the combination of low European birthrates and increasing Muslim immigration means that by this century’s end, Europe will be “part of the Arabic west, of the Maghreb.” If ­non-­Muslims then flee Europe, as Middle East specialist Daniel Pipes predicted in The New York Sun, “grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior ­civilization—­at least until a ­Saudi-­style regime transforms them into mosques or a ­Taliban-­like regime blows them up.”

The reality, however, looks rather different from such dire scenarios. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that while Muhammad topped Thomas in 2006, it was something of a Pyrrhic victory: Fewer than two percent of Britain’s male babies bore the prophet’s name. One fact that gets lost among distractions such as the Times story is that the birthrates of Muslim women in Europe—and around the world—have been falling significantly for some time. Data on birthrates among different religious groups in Europe are scarce, but they point in a clear direction. Between 1990 and 2005, for example, the fertility rate in the Netherlands for Moroccan-born women fell from 4.9 to 2.9, and for ­Turkish-­born women from 3.2 to 1.9. In 1970, ­Turkish-­born women in Germany had on average two children more than ­German-­born women. By 1996, the difference had fallen to one child, and it has now dropped to half that number.

These sharp reductions in fertility among Muslim immigrants reflect important cultural shifts, which include universal female education, rising living standards, the inculcation of local mores, and widespread availability of contraception. Broadly speaking, birthrates among immigrants tend to rise or fall to the local statistical norm within two ­generations.

Read the whole thing here.  This has been another installment of "Lies Created to Keep You Freaked Out".