Alex Massie Alex Massie

Oh No! The Muslims Are Coming!

Sure as eggs is eggs, you can count on some folk being terribly exercised each time it is “revealed” that lots of boys named Mohammed, or some variation of the prophet’s name, are being born in europe. This time it’s the revelation [link fixed] that in four Dutch cities Mohammed is the most popular name for boys. Oh no! The Muslims are coming! Never mind that Mohammed is only the 16th most popular boys name in Holland as a whole, better by far to raise the spectre of an Islamic “takeover” of Dutch cities.

Never mind that this sort of fear-mongering has become an annual tradition. Did you know, for instance, that Mohammed was already the second most popular boys’ name in Britain? Clearly the Caliphate is on the march! Except, of course, that muslims are much more likely to name their sons Mohammed than Christians are to call their son any single name. That is, there’s much greater variance amongst non-muslim families. In other words, unless you’re wanting to stoke panic and resentment what kids are called is not a terribly useful metric.

Of course, we’re also encouraged to believe that european civilisation is threatened by millions of splendidly fertile muslim women breeding for Mohammed. You can’t “buck” demographics don’t you know and soon muslims will be a plurality of the EU population and some states will “fall” within fifty years, becoming muslim-majority enterprises.

All this from a base of 3% of the EU population at the moment! All this despite the fact that in many european countries muslim fertility rates are, not surprisingly, declining.

None of that matters, however. Nor may one observe that Islam is not synonymous with Wahhabism. For that matter, in plenty of european countries religious observance amongst muslims is declining.

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