10.05
The Economist has described the concept of Eurabia as scaremongering. Matt Carr wrote that “What began as an outlandish conspiracy theory has become a dangerous Islamophobic fantasy”
The first academic work to address the Eurabia thesis is Integrating Islam Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France, by scholars Justin Vaisse and Jonathan Laurence. Professor Laurence begins:
Those who utter the term ‘Eurabia’ conjure up a mutant European continent under pressure from oil-producing states that has all but abandoned its values and policies to a horde of Arab immigrants. Our book attempts to dismantle that position by exploring the actual evolution of French policies towards Muslims and organized Islam since the 1970s. We try to do away with one of the false premises of ‘Eurabia’, namely, that French and European governments – fuelled by self-loathing multiculturalist policies- have capitulated to Muslims’ cultural and religious demands.
Justin Vaisse says the book intends to debunk “four myths of the alarmist school.” Using Muslims in France as an example, he says:
- The Muslim population is not growing as fast as the scenario claims, since the fertility rate of immigrants declines
- Muslims are not a monolithic or cohesive group
- Muslims do seek to integrate politically and socially
- Despite their numbers, Muslims have little influence on foreign policy (e.g. policy toward Israel)
According to David Aaronovitch:
[Eurabia] is a concept created by a writer called Bat Ye’or who, according to the publicity for her most recent book, “chronicles Arab determination to subdue Europe as a cultural appendage to the Muslim world — and Europe’s willingness to be so subjugated”. This, as students of conspiracy theories will recognise, is the addition of the Sad Dupes thesis to the Enemy Within idea.
Claim of France leading the Eurabia conspiracy and “Europe’s willingness to be so subjugated” can be seen as xenophobia toward France or Europe. According to Randy McDonald, “many Eurabianists are motivated by domestic politics”, by example the “European countries [being] skeptical about the Bush Administration’s foreign policy” (including the Iraq War and pre-war since 2002) and “‘Eurabia’ has come into a new vogue among conservatives (particularly Anglophone ones) who blame European reluctance to support United States foreign-policy initiatives (like, say, Iraq)”.
Many partisans of the Eurabia theory claim that there is already 12% Muslims in France, although 2007 polls showed only 3% Muslim. According to The Economist, “[Bruce Bawer] uses wildly exaggerated statistics to give warning that Muslim birth rates will soon turn Europe into ‘Eurabia’. The Muslim share of Switzerland’s population is not an ‘astonishing 20%’, as Mr Bawer claims, but 4.3%, at least according to the 2000 Swiss census.” According to the CIA World Factbook and several other source, there were 14 to 16 million Muslims in European Union in 2007, that is 3% of total population (495 M). According to Matt Carr, an “expansion from 3 per cent to 40 per cent within twenty years would be nothing short of miraculous”.
Writer Ralph Peters concedes that Muslim assimilation is an issue and sees clashes between Muslim immigrants and Europeans as likely, but argues that the Eurabia thesis is the reverse of the real situation. “The endangered species isn’t the ‘peace loving’ European lolling in his or her welfare state,” he writes, “but the continent’s Muslim immigrants.” Citing Europe’s violent and intolerant history, Peters predicts that once Europeans feel significantly threatened by Muslims, whether or not those feelings are justified, they will “over-react with stunning ferocity,” ending in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims.
French academic historian Ivan Jablonka, from École Normale Supérieure in Paris, asserts that Robert Spencer or Bat Ye’or’s views lack of academic seriousness: their purported historical and interpretative continuity between some data picked up from Middle Age Islamic civilization and modern activism is a political construction poorly substantiated. For Jablonka, writings of authors like Spencer or Bat Ye’or relentlessly intent to designate “new enemies for wars to come”, and “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis shares some of its certainty with the far right. The book faill easyly in the conspiracy paranoia”.
Common sense refutation of Eurabian theory proponents like Mark Stein, author of America Alone, is that their demographic predictions are based on extrapolating existing Muslim birth rates in Western Europe and, crucially, assuming that they will continue at this rate forever. Historical trends have repeatedly suggested that second or third generation descendents of immigrants have birth rates comparable to the native population.
Comparisons with antisemitism
The theory of Eurabia has been compared to antisemitic writings by left-wing British journalist Johann Hari, who calls the two “startlingly similar” and says that “there are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca”, referring to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
In Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, journalist Andreas Malm quotes Mark Steyn predicting genocide and highlights the conspiratorical claims against Islam as a whole made by the Eurabia writers. In a follow-up article, journalist Eva Ekselius claims “Like the Jews were depicted as the foreign, the other, onto which one could project all the traits the culture wants to deny in themselves, so the ‘muslims’ now get to take over the second-hand props of anti-semitism” and makes a direct comparison to pre-war Europe.
Israeli peace activist Adam Keller, in a letter of protest sent on June 2, 2008 to the Israeli publisher of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, wrote:
In 1886 the French antisemite Edouard Drumont published ‘La France Juive’ (Jewish France), creating the false nightmarish image of a France dominated by Jews, and sowing the poisonous seeds which came to fruit when Vichy French officials collaborated in the mass murder of French Jewry. [...] Bat Ye’or follows in notorious footsteps indeed by creating the false nightmarish image of a Europe dominated by Arabs and Muslims.