Mark Steyn on Islam in Europe

In the following interview from Danish television (hat tip Vlad Tepes), Mark Steyn presents his analysis of the political impact of the demographic Islamisation of Europe. Will Europe be the same when it has an entirely different population? Jews, he points out, are leaving Malmö because of hostility from the resident Muslim population. In Steyn’s opinion, the city has “gone past tolerant multicultural Sweden and become something else”.

He highlights how a couple of generations ago, indigenous Britons would have been astonished if you had predicted that in 2010 75% of Bradford’s Pakistanis would be married to their first cousins. In cities such as Brussels and Rotterdam we are already witnessing a situation in which they are taking on a “semi-Muslim political character”. Many cities, he claims, are “past the point of no return” in terms of their demographic Islamisation. His analysis is very much in line with that of Christopher Caldwell whose 'Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West' was published last year.  If you have not read it and have any interest in this subject, I would recommend that you get hold of a copy.

When Steyn's interviewer deploys the hackneyed assertion that Muslim immigrants are required to help bolster the economies and welfare states of western social democracies, Steyn provides a rapid rebuttal noting that collectively Muslims do not pay their way and are in fact an economic drain upon their host societies. Importantly, he notes that the rot underpinning the failure of Muslim minorities to adapt and assimilate to the host societies originates in the politically correct multiculturalist attitudes of European elites. These, he observes, were adopted after they lost confidence in themselves and their peoples in the wake of World War II. They drew the wrong conclusions which led them to a wholesale rejection of nationalism, ethnic identity and their cultural inheritance. Immigrant children in the UK for example are taught to despise the history of the country in which they now live, for they are told that it was a fount of imperialist inequity. It is unsurprising therefore that Muslim immigrants do not believe that there is anything worthwhile to assimilate to.

Most of the following video is in English, but the short portions in Danish are not subtitled. The interview with Steyn begins at 34 seconds in, breaks off for a few seconds, and resumes at 1 minute 35.