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By Matthew Claxton
TWO YEARS ago, Canadian ex-pat columnist Mark Steyn
riled people up with a new book – and an excerpt, which appeared in Maclean’s magazine.
In June, Steyn was before a human rights tribunal in
Vancouver, accused by the Canadian Islamic Congress of discrimination and
exposing Muslims to hatred.
Not guilty
Right off the top, I’m going to say that I
don’t think Steyn is guilty of any crime, that I don’t think he
should be penalized, fined, jailed – and especially not censored for
his article or his book.
Free speech is our single, most valuable right, and it
should not be compromised.
That said, Steyn is dead wrong.
In the article, ‘The future belongs to
Islam,’ Steyn sets out the case that non-Muslim folks in Western
democracies are having too few kids, that Muslims are having lots –
and that therefore, within a few decades or so, the Western world will be
crushed from without – or consumed from within.
He’s not exactly a fan of Islam, and it shows. He
admits that some Muslims are not terrorists; but many, he writes,
“function wittingly or otherwise as the ‘good cop’ end of
an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine.”
Yes, Steyn is a right winger, a neo-con, a blowhard
– with a bit of wit to back him up. But let’s address his
central thesis.
Ham-fisted approach
The demographic argument is a powerful one, but Steyn
deploys it in the most ham-fisted manner possible.
First, Steyn’s article ignores the fact that
there are many Muslims who embrace democracy and civil rights, and it
ignores the very real differences between Muslim populations. Even
Christopher Hitchens, the pro-Iraq War writer, called Steyn to task on
this.
It’s like assuming that Appalachian snake
handlers, Polish Catholics, and Anglicans from Peterborough are all
basically the same.
The worst flaw seems to be in Steyn’s crude
attempts at math. In the Maclean’s excerpt, he tosses out the notion that, within 50
years, there will be more people living in Yemen (population 23 million)
than in Russia (population 140 million).
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Yemen currently has a high birthrate, at 6.4 children
per woman, while Russia’s is below replacement. So if nothing else
changes, this is theoretically possible. Not going to happen, though.
Any number of things could happen between now and 2050
to upset current trends. An increase in prosperity in Yemen is the most
likely thing to cut the birth rate there (folks have fewer babies when they
get richer), but there’s also the possibility of grassroots action,
cultural change, government regulation, or emigration.
Brute-force demographics
The same sort of brute-force demographics were used in
a number of late-1960s books, like The
Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich.
He predicted hundreds of millions would starve in the
1970s and 80s, a prediction which missed the mark slightly.
Steyn also assumes that values are fixed, that
Westerners will inherit Western ideals, that Muslims will become new
jihadists.
None of us believe the same things, to the letter, that
our grandparents believed in. Go back half a dozen generations, and most of
us had ancestors who would swear by the divine right of kings and the need
to burn witches at the stake. Change happens.
Which is to say that, if there are more people in the
Muslim world in the future, there is no guarantee they will be hostile or
intolerant or undemocratic.
Steyn is not preventing the future he fears, and he may
be helping it along.
Discord and barriers based on religion are not a good
formula to avoid a religious war.
Courtesy of Langley Advance.
July 2008
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