Is England Becoming a Muslim Nation?

The London News announced today that a UK study indicated that the most popular name for baby boys born there (currently Jack) will be replace by Mohammed next year.

The average birth rate for native Englishwomen is 1.1 children per,  while the Muslim women's birth rate is 3.4, or more than triple. By all measures and accounts England will become Muslim in the not to distant future.

The implications for this transition are staggering - and the same trend is apparent all across Europe as Muslims pour into these countries in record numbers, clustering in bustling communities and making their presence known socially, politically, and terrorist acts abound while radical Muslim Imams preach Jihad against the Western world.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, will reveal that Britain's highest birth rates are in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, both predominantly Muslim.

The birth rate among women born in Pakistan but living in the UK is three times higher than that among British-born women, the figures will show.

Separate figures due this month will reveal whether Mohammed has overtaken Jack as Britain's most popular name for baby boys.

Last year's ratings showed that Jack remained in first place, chosen for 6,928 babies, but Mohammed - taking into account all of its variant spellings - had overtaken Thomas to lie in second place with 5,991.

The evidence of a rising birth rate underlines last month's official projections, first revealed in The Sunday Telegraph, which showed the population on course to rise to 77 million by the middle of the century, or even 91 million at the highest forecast.

The figures were sharply higher than in previous projections, due to higher forecasts for all three of the factors that affect population: birth rate, net migration, and longevity.

This week, the ONS will release a compendium relating to the 669,531 babies born in England and Wales last year. The total was 3.7 per cent up on the previous year's figure, the fifth successive annual rise.

The fertility rate - the average number of children a woman will bear in her lifetime - has risen to 1.87. Five years ago it reached a low of 1.63, well below the "replacement rate" needed to keep the population stable in the absence of immigration. Since then, a sharp increase in immigration has lifted the birth rate.

This week's breakdown will reveal details including which areas have the highest and lowest birth rates; the average age of parents when their first and subsequent babies are born; the proportion of children born to married and unmarried couples, and the number born to middle-class and working-class parents.

Included in the tables will be figures relating to the country of birth of new parents. A preview of last year's figures shows that 21.9 per cent of live births last year were to mothers born outside the UK, up from 20.8 per cent in 2005.

Of the total 669,531 births last year, 146,956 were to mothers born outside the UK. Among these, 25,948, or 3.9 per cent of total births, were to mothers born in Pakistan or Bangladesh, while 33,689, or five per cent, were to mothers born in Europe.

Please read the article below, factor it with what you know of Muslim attitudes toward Western civilization and draw your own conclusions.

The Muslim birth rate | Muslim fertility

Is there anything demonstrably intentional about this Islamic demographic expansion?

In an article seeking to "explode the myth" of Muslim demographic aggression, journalists Namita Bhandare, Louise Fernandes and Minu Jain themselves admit that according to official surveys, "the disapproval of family planning is highest among Muslims", while "the practice of family planning methods in 1980 was lowest amongst Muslims (only 23% of those surveyed practised it as opposed to 36% Hindus)".

[1] They further admit that between 1971 and 1981, "the Hindu population was up by 24.15%, whereas the Muslim population shot up by 30.59%". Further, they give the decline in fertility levels in the same period: 20.1% decline for urban and 20.0% for rural Hindus, 18.5% for urban and 17.3% for rural Muslims.  This means that the already lower fertility level of the Hindus is declining faster than that of the Muslims.

Let us hear the same indications from an official source: "The total fertility Rate (TFR) is 3.4 children per woman.  (…) Muslims have considerably higher fertility than any other religious group.  Muslim women have a TFR of 4.4, which is 1.1 children higher than the TFR for Hindu women."[2]

The implication of these data is that the Muslim rate of growth in percentage of the Indian population will go on increasing.  Instead of extrapolating across centuries, we may make a safer prognosis for the next few decades.  It is safe to predict that the 2001 census will show another sharp increase in the rate at which Muslims are demographically catching up with the Hindu majority. 

It is then that the full effect of the birth control campaigns of the 1960s and 70s will become visible.  Given the higher Hindu participation in the birth control effort of the 1960s and 70s, we must now be witnessing a cumulative effect, of a proportionately smaller number of Hindu mothers (born in that period) having in their turn each a smaller number of children than the proportionately larger number of Muslim mothers, on average.

3. 2.  The economic explanation

Unable to refute the Hindu Revivalist perception of a visible and increasing Muslim demographic growth, the journalists retreat to their next line of defence: they admit the fact of Muslim demographic expansion but disconnect it from Muslim identity. 

They offer as their explanation that it has nothing to do with Islam as such nor with any aggressive designs: it is all due to Muslim poverty, "the reason has to do with economics and not with religion".

[3] This is the old Marxist clich: reduce everything To economic factors.  It is still the most common explanation for the higher Muslim growth rate: the average Indian Muslim is poorer and less educated than the average Hindu, and poverty and low education both happen to lead to a higher birth rate.

Baljit Rai, a retired police officer who was a personal witness to India's failure in containing the rising tide of illegal I'mmigration from Bangladesh, refutes this argument by pointing to the birth rate among Kerala Muslims, who have a high level of education and a relatively high standard of living. 

Mani Shankar Aiyar had claimed on the basis of statewise figures for the southern states that "Muslim birth rates in all these enlightened states are very much lower than Hindu birth rates in unenlightened states like Uttar Pradesh".

A secularist journalist confirms: "In spite of this 'near total literacy' the population growth rate of Muslims who constitute one-fourth of Kerala's population is as high as 2.3 per cent per year, which is more than even the national PGR [= population growth rate] of 2.11 per annum and is almost double the PGR of Hindus in Kerala itself."[6]

The figures for Kerala exemplify a general rule: at any given level of literacy and economic status, Muslims will have a markedly higher birth rate than their Hindu counterparts, even to the extent of having a higher birth rate than Hindus in a lower educational or income bracket.  A secularist journalist, Pranay Gupta, estimates that in Hyderabad, which has a large Muslim middle-class, a typical Muslim family has eight children while a Hindu family has four.[7]

The Muslim growth rate worldwide

The same trend as witnessed in India is conspicuous at the international level: Muslim countries are among the champions of demographic growth.  The economic explanation for high and low birthrates breaks down when confronted with the figures for Muslim countries: the rich and orthodox Saudi Arabs procreate much faster than the relatively poor but more secularized Turks.

The yearbooks of the Encyclopedia Brittannica give a wealth of countrywise data, including the population's doubling-rate, which is a more accurate indicator of effective demographic growth than the birth rate.  It turns out that no Muslim country has a markedly lower growth rate than India.  Indonesia, Turkey and Tunisia are at about the same level as India, which is already seen by many as a demographic disaster area itself (doubling in ca.  33 years).  It is no coincidence that these are the three most secularized Muslim countries.[15] The more Islamic a country, the higher The birthrate: Iran, Jordan, Lybia, Kuwait and Eritrea double their populations in 20 years or less, up to twice as fast as India.[16]

The Arabs are the champions: "In no Arab country Does the population increase at a rate lower than 2.5% per year.  In practically every Arab country, more than 4 inhabitants in 10 are youngsters below 15."[17] Pakistan is Asia's Fastest-growing non-Arab country, Doubling its population every 24 years.[18] No country is known to have a higher birth-rate among non-Muslims than among Muslims, but countries where the opposite is true are numerous.[19] The starkest differential is probably Found in the European countries.  Thus, to use another demographic indicator, the percentage of the under-25 age group in Britain is 33 for natives, 48 for Indians (mostly Hindus) and Caribbeans, 60 for Pakistanis and 63 for Bangladeshis.[20] A similar indicator for the Subcontinent: the under-15 constitute 46.3% in Pakistan, 45.1% in Bangladesh, and 35.2% in India.[21]

In Belgium, the average native couple (Christian or secular) has 1.7 children, the immigrant Moroccan couple (Muslim) has 3.25 children, i.e. nearly twice as many.[22] About American Islam, a Pakistani observer makes an estimate for the year 2,000: "The US (…) may by then become the 14th or 15th 'largest Islamic country'.  Islam, in fact, is the fastest-growing religion in the US".  Though the growth is largely due to I'mmigration, he also sees "a higher birth rate" as "a major factor".[23]

3. 5.  Islamic government policies

In Malaysia, where Muslims were only 50% at the time of independence, just enough to declare it an Islamic state, the Government pursues a natalist policy at least as far as the Muslim Malays are concerned (non-Muslims are mostly members of the Chinese and Tamil Hindu minorities).  It is only in countries where Muslims are in an overwhelming majority and demographic competition is simply not an issue that Islamic governments and religious leaders, faced with the problems resulting from overpopulation, have made an effort to curb the birth rate.

Iran now tries to encourage a three-children-per-family norm, and prides itself on reducing the yearly increase in population to 1.75%, about half of what it was in the 1980s.[24] But this will not markedly curb population growth in absolute figures for the next few decades: "Although the rate of population Growth Has come down (…) the girls born in response to Khomeini's call for more Muslims will soon reach marrying age; 45.5% of the population is under 15."[25]

Given the extremely High birth rate in the generation now growing up to become the fathers and mothers of the next two decades (much more numerous than the generation presently in their twenties and thirties and trying to stick to the three-children-per-family norm), even a two-children-per-family norm would still amount to an impressive demographic growth for two more generations.  With a norm of three children per family, Iran is not even pursuing a policy aimed at achieving demographic zero growth, but even if it were, it could only achieve it at a much later date, and at a much higher population level, than countries with a more stringent commitment to demographic responsibility.[26]

There is no indication that even one Muslim country will achieve a substantially lower growth rate than India's Hindu community within the next decades.

[1] "A pampered minority", Sunday, 7-2-1993, with reference to a 1980 survey by the Operations Research Group.

[2] K.M. Mathew, ed.: Manorama Yearbook 1996, p.458-459.

[3] "A pampered minority", Sunday, 7-2-1993.

[4] M.S. Aiyar: "Sex, lies and tushtikaran", Sunday, 24-1-1993.

[5] See Baljit Rai: Is India Going Islamic, p.103 ff.

[6] K.B. Sahay: "Incentives and Disincentives", Hindustan Times, 19/12/1995.

[7] P. Gupta: India, the Challenge of Change (Methuen/Mandarin, London 1989), p.219.

[8] A. Bose: "Muslim rate of growth", Indian Express, 9-9-1995.

[9] As Ashish Bose regretfully notes, the 1991 census gives no cross-tabulation between the data on religion, income and literacy, so we have to make do with old data, informed guesses or separate regional investigations into the connections between these factors.

[10] K.M. Mathew, ed.: Manorama Yearbook 1996, p.458-459. TFR: total fertility rate.

[11] Figures given in Mohan Rao: "Not born of faith", Indian Express, 9-11-1993.

[12] M. Rao: "Not born of faith", Indian Express, 9-11-1993.

[13] M.S. Aiyar: "Sex, Lies and Tushtikaran", Sunday, 24-1-1993.

[14] "Census 1991", in S. Shahabuddin, ed.: Muslim India, Sep.1995, p.386.

[15] Mohan Rao ("Not born of faith", Indian Express, 9-11-1993) argues that "the percentage of couples using contraceptives in predominantly Muslim countries is very high", and to prove his point, he cites figures for Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt, three countries where the Government policies are denounced as un-Islamic by the guardians of orthodoxy.

[16] Figures taken from the countrywise data in the Encyclopedia Brittannica Book of the Year 1994.

[17] "Arababy's", Trends (Brussels), 6-9-1990.

[18] Confirmed in a different set of demographic indicators given in The Economist, 3-10-1992.

[19] The only countries competing with the top Muslim countries for the highest demographic growth rate are some African countries (Kenya, Ivory Coast); at least on paper, for their projected doubling-time will have to be revised downwards because of the AIDS epidemic.

[20] Figures given by Prof.  Judith Brown, Beit Professor of Imperial History, Oxford, speaking at the Annual South Asia Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, October 1995.

[21] Encyclopedia Brittannica, 1996 yearbook.

[22] Guy Tegenbos: "Gezinnen kroostrijkst bij Marokkanen en Isralieten", De Standaard, 17-8-1994.

[23] Abdus Sattar Ghazali: "Middle East poised to confront demographic explosion", Dawn (Karachi), 3-11-1989.

[24] "Iran brengt groei bevolking sterk terug" (Dutch: "Iran strongly reduces population growth"), Volkskrant (Amsterdam), 13-7-1995.

[25] "Arrows in the heart of Iran", The Economist, 3-10-1992.  The title is a pun on Ayatollah Khomeini's natalist exhortation that "every Muslim child born is an arrow through the heart of America".

[26] E.g. Vietnam, with a two-children-per-family norm but still increasing by over 1 million per year, not to speak of China with its draconic one-child-per-family norm but a population still increasing at a rate of over 10 million individuals per year.