Europe not doomed after all shocker!

By which I mean to say that – surprise! – there’s evidence that the apocalyptic scenario beloved on the nutty right that Europe will be living – if such an elevated term can be applied to our miserable future – under Sharia law sooner than you can whistle up the call to prayer is, well, a hysterical exaggeration.

From the Financial Times:

Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University who studies European Muslims, says: “It’s being advocated by people who don’t consult the numbers. All these claims are really emotional claims.” Sometimes they are made by Muslim or far-right groups, who share an interest in exaggerating the numbers. Nominal Muslims – whether religious or not – account for 3-4 per cent of the European Union’s total population of 493m. Their percentage should rise, but far more modestly than the extreme predictions. That is chiefly because Muslims, both in Europe and the main “emigrating countries” of Turkey and north Africa, are having fewer babies… But the birth-rates of Europe’s Muslim immigrants, though still above the EU’s average, are falling.