Investor's Business Daily, June 6th, 2007
Culture: What's in a name? Plenty, if you live in Britain. There, new data show, the name Mohammad is ready to become the most popular baby boy's name by the end of this year, overtaking Jack. That's not trivial.
Let us first add the standard Seinfeldian disclaimer: Not that there's anything wrong with that. But this startling shift in naming does seem in a small way to underscore the huge demographic shift taking place not just in Britain, but all of Europe.
As the London Times noted, though Muslims account for just 3% of Britain's 65 million people, their birthrate is three times higher than that of non-Muslims. Jolly Olde England, with all its cultural quirks and unique greatness, will soon be a thing of the past.
No big deal, you say? Maybe not. But this same sea change has swept all of Europe in recent years, including France, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and the Netherlands, among other nations.
After World War II, many of those countries -- remember, they lost millions of workers -- imported young laborers from their former colonial possessions around the world. It helped fuel the European "miracle" of the 1950s and '60s.
Today, the floodtide continues. Millions of new immigrants, many if not most of them Muslim, continue to come, lured by plentiful jobs and the prospect of cushy welfare-state benefits. With Europe's population set to decline sharply this century, the gaping demographic hole will be filled by Europe's high-fertility Muslim population.
The stark reality is this: Europe's birth rate has fallen dangerously below the 2.1 births per woman required to keep population stable. Western Europe will lose as many as 100 million people by 2100.
Not to sound melodramatic, but this could spell the end of Western Europe's civilization. As we've noted, recent terror plots show a shocking depth of hostility to the West, especially among unassimilated Muslims born here. Just last year, a poll showed 40% of U.K. Muslims want Sharia law imposed. It might be coming soon.
Given all this, can tolerant, liberal Western culture survive?
"Such a trend," wrote Philip Longman in "The Empty Cradle," "could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an anti-market culture dominated by fundamentalism -- a new Dark Ages."
We have nothing against children named Mohammad. But thanks to demographics and a failure to assimilate Muslim immigrants, radical, unwanted change is coming to the Western culture we all share. We think it's worth keeping.
