Derfor er Eurabia-myten falsk

Forestillingen om ´Eurabia´, altså et Europa der løbes over ende af muslimske immigranter og deres frontsoldater, de radikaliserede islamister, er en myte, skriver Justin Vaisse i denne artikel fra Foreign Policy.

Eurabia-alarmisterne trækker mere på anekdoter end på solide data, når de fremstiller Europa som en civilisation der med lukkede øjne går sin undergang i møde, konkluderer Vaisse, som selv fremdrager en række studier, der alle afslører Eurabia-myten som falsk og hul.

For amerikanske Eurabia-forfattere, folk som Christopher Caldwell, Mark Steyn, Bruce Thornton, Walter Laqueur, Claire Berlinski og Bruce Bawer har islam-truslen erstattet Sovjetkommunismen som trusselsbillede:

"... many of these books offer a variation on the conservative Cold War vision of Europe as vulnerable to the spread of communism -- only now, Muslims have replaced Soviets and Euro-communists as the enemies. The continuity in clichés with the Europhobic literature of the 1970s and 1980s is striking: In both periods Europe is described with terms like appeasing, impotent, asexual, feminine, post-nationalistic, irreligious, apologetic, self-loathing, naive, decadent, and so forth."

Eurabia-myten bygger på to falske forestillinger, slår Justin Vaisse fast:

"The first is demographic. The literature holds that Europe will be Islamic at the end of the century "at the very latest," with Muslim majorities in some European countries "in the foreseeable future," in the words of Bernard Lewis in his 2007 pamphlet, "Europe and Islam."

Når eurabisterne interesserer sig så meget for fremtidsscenarier, så er det fordi nutiden ser knap så alarmerende ud:

"According to the higher range of estimates by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), there are already as many as 18 million Muslims in Western Europe, or 4.5 percent of the population. The percentage is even lower for the 27-country European Union as a whole. The future will certainly see an increase, but it´s hard to imagine that Europe will even reach the 10 percent mark (except in some countries or cities). For one thing, as the same NIC study indicates and demographers agree, fertility rates among Muslims are sharply declining as children of immigrants gradually conform to prevailing social and economic norms. Nor is immigration still a major source of newly minted European Muslims. Only about 500,000 people a year come legally to Europe from Muslim-majority countries, with an even smaller number coming illegally -- meaning that the annual influx is a fraction of a percent of the European population.

I Danmark har den største muslimske indvandrergruppe, tyrkerne, som også er den gruppe der har været længst tid i Danmark, nu en fertilitet der kun ligger få procent højere end den indfødt danske. Og desuden vokser de oprindelige befolkninger i alle europæiske lande, undtagen Tyskland:

"... though the Eurabia books describe Europe as committing "slow motion suicide" (Thornton in Decline and Fall), reality begs to differ -- and increasingly so. According to demographers, in 2008, fertility rates in France and Ireland were more than two children per woman, close to the U.S. (and replacement) level; in Britain and Sweden they were above 1.9. And though in the 1990s European countries set an all-time record for low fertility rates, figures are now rising in all EU states except Germany.

Den anden falske forestilling om de europæiske muslimer, der kendetegner Eurabia-alarmisterne, er at de betragter muslimer som basalt set ´anderledes mennesker´ end alle andre:

"For most of these authors, Muslims are "different people," and Muslim identity is incompatible with anything else -- an assumption they share with Islamists. But to large majorities of Europe´s Muslims, Islam is neither an exclusive identity nor a marching order."

Det er simpelthen en begrebsmæssig umulighed for alarmisterne at opfatte muslimer som normale mennesker der kan integreres. Hvor vi andre opfatter muslimer som en meget uhomogen gruppe, hvoraf langt de fleste er fredelige mennesker med varierende grad af kompetencer til at integrere sig på den korte bane, så opfatter og fremstiller Eurabia-fortalerne muslimer som et uintegrerbart fremmedelement der organisk repræsenteres af muslimske kulturkrigere, terrorrister og imamer.

Alt er ikke fryd og gammen, understreger Justin Vaisse, men det er på tide, at de mest fornuftige og pragmatiske Eurabia-alarmister ser i øjnene, at muslimerne er her, og at de er blevet til europæere:

The most likely scenario for the next few decades -- increasing integration of Muslims accompanied by continued cultural tensions, occasional terrorist bombings, and differentiated outcomes in various countries -- is a conceptual impossibility for most Eurabia authors because for them Muslims can´t really become Europeans. It is, however, already the reality. Maybe it is time they take notice.