In that august forum of serious, respectable conservatism, "The Corner," Mark "Mandingo" Steyn has responded to the post here yesterday taking him and his fellow Islamophobes to task for the "psychosexual panic" they evince in the face of their self-concocted vision of a "takeover" of Europe by prodigiously breeding Muslims. It goes without saying that Steyn (and a few of his fanboys in the comments section here) make no genuine reply to the substance of the piece, which drew heavily on a long, detailed essay on Islamophobia by Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian.

Instead, Mandingo comes up with what he obviously believes is the "smoking gun" to prove that a monolithic, undifferentiated, hive-minded Muslim horde is procreating its way to domination over the cowardly "pantywaists" of white Europe. And what is this killer evidence? (And "killer" is certainly the right term; for as we reported here yesterday, Steyn is on record as saying that Europeans will soon figure out how to "buck" the Muslim demographic surge: "If you can't outbreed the enemy, cull 'em.") Anyway, Mandingo's proof of Muslim overbreeding is -- brace yourself:

Lists of the most popular names for newborn boys.

Yes, Steyn -- the scholar's scholar, statistician extraordinaire -- has perused the popular names for babies in two whole European cities, and has discovered -- gasp! -- that they are headed by "Mohammed," and also have other Islam-derived names among the top ranks. This, he says, should convince "even the squishiest multiculti pantywaist" that there is sure enough an evil Ay-rab in the woodpile out there, and that, as he put it in one of his shaky-kneed screeds, it's "the end of the world as we know it."

Now, I would never put my meager learning up against an intellectual giant like Herr Professor Mandingo, but I would like to offer a few layman's observations on these earth-shattering revelations.

First, Herr Professor does not seem to realize that, as general rule, those of Muslim heritage tend to draw their children's first names from a small pool of historic Islamic names; and that variations of "Mohammed" are far and away the top choice from this small pool. Hence, in a list of baby's names, you will find a preponderance of a few Islamic monikers skewing the statistics.

At the same time, it is now the general fashion among those of Christian heritage in Europe (and the United States and Canada) to draw upon a far larger and more diverse pool of first names for their children. A few generations ago, most of these too would have come from a small pool of historic Christian names: saints, apostles, Biblical figures, etc. Now, they come from everywhere -- when they are not simply made up out of whole cloth. In other words, if it were the fashion today for Europeans of Christian heritage to name their children after, say, the four evangelists, then those same lists would be teeming with Matthews, Johns, Lukes -- and even Marks. I myself am a fairly prodigious breeder of offspring, and my four children have names drawn from Russian literature, Celtic myth, a Jane Austen novel and the Jewish scriptures. And this is typical of millions of other parents of Christian heritage.

Second, Professor Mandingo and his allies and acolytes also seem blissfully unaware that not every little baby named Mohammed is going to grow up to be one of the zealous, monolithic Muslims of their imagination. That boy is more likely to grow up to be a largely if not wholly secular guy, at home in the culture of the nation where he was born. (The same goes for girls too, of course, but as Steyn's little two-city lists deal only with boys, we'll confine the discussion to males.) And if he does grow up to be a practicing Muslim, again he will not be a member of some mythical zombie-like monolith, but will have to find his own individual path in a faith that is every bit as variegated, diverse, fractured and conflicted as Christianity, if not more so. But Mandingoism blinds its adherents to the fact that Muslims are actual, individual human beings, with all the inherent complexities and conflicts thereof. They can only see a dark, undifferentiated mass spreading like an oil slick over the pristine marble surface of European "civilization."

Finally, there is the embarrassing fact that Muslims constitute a miniscule minority in Europe: as Mishra pointed out only yesterday, "Muslims account for only 3% to 4% of the EU's total population of 493 million." In the UK, there are an estimated 2 million people who call themselves Muslim, out of a total population of around 61 million. And many if not most of the "statistics" on the "Muslim takeover" of Europe used by the Mandingoist panic-merchants are, to use strict academic nomenclature, bullshit. As the BBC reported this month, in a story about a YouTube video (already seen by 10 million viewers) detailing the supposed "Muslim demographic time-bomb":

This seven-and-a-half minute video "Muslim Demographics" uses slick graphics, punctuated with dramatic music, to make some surprising claims, asserting that much of Europe will be majority Muslim in just a few decades... But are any of the video's statistics true?

...The video says that a typical French family has 1.8 children but that French Muslim families have 8.1 children. No source is given for this information and the French government doesn't collect statistics by religion. So it is impossible to say what the precise fertility rates among different religious groups in France are. But no country on earth has such a high fertility rate and in Algeria and Morocco, the two nations which send the largest numbers of Muslim immigrants to France, the fertility rate is 2.38, according to the UN's 2008 figures.

In the Netherlands, according to the video, half of all newborns are Muslim, and in 15 years half the population will be Muslim. But the Dutch office of statistics estimates that Muslims make up only 5% of the population. For Dutch Muslim women to produce half the nation's babies, they would have to be giving birth at least 14 times the rate of their non-Muslim neighbours.

And yes, in the feverish, night-sweating brainpans of the Mandingoists, they really do believe that them hot Muslim mamas and those big Islamic bucks are breeding 14 times faster than their white compatriots, who have had the vim and vigor drained out of them by all that sissy-mary multiculti nonsense.

Is 25% of the Belgian population Muslim, as the video asserts? No. The Belgian office of statistics points to a 2008 study which suggests the real figure is just 6%.

...But the video doesn't just rely on statistics, it also uses an official Government statement. It quotes it as saying: "The fall in German population can no longer be stopped. Its downward spiral is no longer reversible. It will be a Muslim state by the year 2050."

The statement in question was made by then vice-president of the Federal Statistics Office, Walter Radermacher, who is now chief statistician of the European Union. He says that while it is true he said Germany's population was in decline, the last part of the quote [in italics] is just an invention. He said nothing about Germany becoming a Muslim state. "The quotation which reads as if the German government believed that Germany will become a Muslim state is simply not true," he says.

The video also claims the German government believes the number of Muslims in Europe will double to 104 million. Mr Radermacher adds: "That is not true. The German government does not believe that the Muslim population will double in the next 40 or 50 years. There are no reliable sources that give a proof for that assumption."

Well, as Ronald Reagan once said, facts are stupid things. Lies are so much more fun -- and more profitable. (Go write a book about "The Non-Threat of a Muslim Europe" and see if any wingut welfare outfits like Regnery Publishing will write you a check.) The fact that Muslims are a small minority in Europe, that their birthrate is falling, that Islam is not a blank, seething, monolithic mass, that Muslims are human beings who live, work, love, strive, suffer and play alongside and with their fellow compatriots without violence or conflict on a daily basis across Europe and the world -- none of this means anything to those whose blood runs hot at the sound of those Mandingo tom-toms beating in their minds.

But, despite everything, we must give Mark Steyn his due. In his baby-name riposte, he does step up and manfully admit that we should "take it as read" that he and Martin Amis and other allies "are all xenophobic racist rightwing nuts suffering from psychosexual panic." I think that here, at last, Herr Professor is standing on solid factual ground.

Comments (17)

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tati said:

mythical ? And if he does grow up to be a practicing Muslim, again he will not be a member of some mythical zombie-like monolith, but will find have to find his own individual path in a faith that is every bit as variegated, diverse, fractured and conflicted as Christianity, if not more so. Yeah, I am so happy that we have these progressive muslim antimonolithic dreamlands like saudi-arabia, iran, yemen, pakistan, afghanistan, where every muslim can find its individual path in a faith. Thanks to Allah. I can hardly wait to have all these pleasures and leisures in europe.

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August 16, 2009
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Chris Floyd said:

	... Yes, little Tati, if the present 5 percent Muslim minority grows to, gosh, say, 10 percent by 2050, I'm sure you will then be living in a replica of Saudi Arabia in Europe, oh yes, indeed. If I were you, I'd start digging a hole right now, and crawl into it, so all those big bad babies named Mohammed can't hurt you.
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August 16, 2009
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Debbieaussie said:

	... Why is that people such as Mark Steyn, have so little 'faith' in western civilisation.
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August 17, 2009
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Gonzolegend said:

This is hilarious Chris ! Don't visit Empire Burl for 2 days and the racists crash the place Must be sooooooo scary living under a Muslim, Black, Communist, Facist, Socialist Kenyan President. I mean what's you're average Joe six pack living in Hicksville to do except wait for the ACORN Army to take the good honest White folk and march em before the death panels!!! And I have no idea why all these Africans and Arabs want to come over to Europe. What with all the peace and prosperity we kindly afforded them through the US Military and the IMF. Why would anyone want to leave liberated Iraq for pinko Europe ??? Yeah the world is a dangerous place for the white man.

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August 17, 2009
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Ken Jackson said:

... Damn all along I thought that sex was mainly fer fun..... Hell I even tried to pogo sitck my way around the pacific when I was a young sailor. Not realizing that I should have ringing those bells for makin a lot of little white xtian folk or mixed asian/oceanic/polynesian folk.... I don't think that I could have caught up in the percentage points to bring them poor white folks out of the minorities, but it sure would have been fun trying... Oh! being that I never managed to have a "thing" for caucasian ladies, does that mean all those kids I should have fathered would have been in their majorities and not in that caucasian minority of the countries of their births??? I kin see a migrane comin on and there isn't any Xanax or any other designer US Trank to get me off the bummer I feel coming on... You probably don't know it, but over 50 years of my life I have lived with people who were of different colors and religions than I. I was outnumbered hundreds if not hundreds of thousands to 1 and never did I ever hear a disparaging remark on my skin color, my religion or lack thereof, my outlandish customs or eating habits or diet etc. Why was this? What is it about the Asian / Pacific Islander that allowed them to accept a person for what they were, not their color, race, religion etc??? Perhaps they understood from centuries of civilization or voyaging on sea, that the worth of a person had nothing to do with the oddities but everything to do with what he or she brought to the group as a whole. I have blood relatives who are afraid to death of anyone that is different. Whether it is the color of their skin, their language, their religion, their country, none of it seems to make a positive difference, and they are not worthy of respect and honor. No thanks America, I would rather be a minority in a country that trusts me no matter what the color of my skin or my religion or lack of, and my funny yankee ways. A place where people live together harmoniously and things just seem to be a lot more peaceful all the way around...

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August 17, 2009 | url
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Jimmy Montague said:

Be careful, Chris! What's going on here begins to sound like the plot of Umberto Eco's novel "Foucault's Pendulum": A couple of brilliant graduate students get editing jobs at a publishing house in Milan. The house specializes in literature on the occult. Of course all sensible people know the occult is bullshit. There are no "good" manuscripts dealing with the occult because it's all a lot of nonsense. By and by the young editors decide to have a little fun with their clientele: they write and publish a series of occult books. They laugh like fiends when they find that their books are wildly successful. Things cease to be funny, however, when a lot of dangerous nutbags start dropping by to talk to the people who wrote those books. The nutbags are convinced that the author(s) know the secret of the philosopher's stone, the long-sought artifact that will unlock the secret of limitless power, etc. Of course they know no such thing. Of course their admirers won't believe them. Things get wilder by the week until, finally, one of the young editors disappears amid circumstances that force his collaborator to conclude that he was snatched. Terrified by the realization, the collaborator flees Milan, goes underground, and tries to locate his partner but cannot. The whole thing ends up in the Louvre, in the dark, in the middle of the night. "They" are coming for him because "they" know he has what "they" want and "they" are not fooling around. Point is you don't want to end up as a recognized authority in matters than concern people like Amis and Steyn. They are the sort who believe that anything you say can and will be used against you. You might be forced to flee to Algiers and hide in the Casbah. Years from now your family will find you hidden away in a little room, in a dark corner, gibbering incoherently and rubbing an oil lamp. My own suggestion is that we start playing games with names like Steyn and Amis. What does one properly say to a fellow who has a steyning anis? Over to you, Sean.

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August 17, 2009 | url
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michael hureaux said:

... Why am I not surprised? Anybody could see where this "war on terror" business was going from the time these "democrats" declared that everything that happened before September 11th, 2001, was irrelevent. Given that they've always declared the history/culture of the non-white world irrelevent, and even though they were forced to do so more quietly in this country for a brief period, the September 11th attacks gave the real threat to world peace- western imperialism- an extended lease on life. I'm not concerned about the race baiters, though, Islamophobes or haters of the Eternal Muslim or whichever fantasy it is they're running this week. A few good sharp kicks in the backside will send these weinies right back into their rat holes.

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August 17, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

	good call Jimmy Foucault's Pendulum -- what Dan Brown was trying to emulate when he wrote The DaVinci Code. I'm afraid I can't pick up the ball and run after your comment. I'm gutted by the wizardry of "Mickey" in the thread following Chris's prior essay that mentioned Mr schittStain and Monsieur Amis.
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August 17, 2009 | url
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scott douglas said:

PLUS anthropomorphic transference syndrome! Chris certainly doesn't need our comments to bolster his insightful debunking of ludicrous net-zoid critiks. Unfortunately, having read the essays and the exchanges, I feel I must relate my dream: Dreampt thusly: the house cat discovers dormant prehistoric fish just under the sod...lots of them. The encounter does not go well. The cat is mauled. But, I actually feel sorry for the fish, and wonder if we can't flood the back lot in order to give them a living space....Well, that seems to be impossible. Besides, they DO have pre-historic jaws! Take the wounded kitty to the vet, two doors down. Vet seems rather condescending - (at one point, he uses the back of a plastic spoon to restrain the utterly docile cat) - still, he does goe through the motions of conducting his diagnosis. Conclusions of said diagnosis are not fatal, but the facts are not good: the kitty has lost most of the digits off of three paws, his outer ears, and one eye. "Actually, you should do the neighborhood a favour and destroy this trouble-making animal, yourself," he says, quite brazenly. I am shocked by this unproffessional advice, but I hide the reaction and say: "That's the funniest thing I've ever heard! I really liked the set-up, and the pacing! Nicely delivered punch-line; really didn't see it coming!" I find that I have three different business cards of his in my hand -- one out of date and one miss-printed -- plus the ludicrous bill for the current consultation; I hand all of them back to him, scoop up the cat, and head for the door. As a riposte, the doctor says, "And have someone check that guest-house in which you live for repairs -- it's a wreck!" When I get back to the house, I let the cat loose and he immediately gallops over the back of the sofa, leaving bloody paw prints. 'Oh, well, he'll scab-up,' I think... Then, I wander into the kitchen and catch my reflection in the window -- there is a huge divot missing out of the top of my head! 'Have the fish gotten at me, too?' I ponder, in passing. Then I realize that I can see my own brains -- and that they're dry, like week-old scrambled eggs. I touch at it, and a kernel falls to the kitchen counter. The horror is overwhelming. I awake in a cold sweat... Recounting the dream, and reading the back and forth here, I have been breaking into tears, at odd times, for two days... Multi-culti pantywaist? Aye-Aye, Sir! Oh, by the way, I'm a Christian... Scott

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August 17, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

oh boy. now you've done it, Scott! You're a Christian? Great balls o' fire! And barrows of brimstone! Why aren't you out there in the world, condemning Sharia law and complaining about UK residents being "displaced"? Don't you realize that immigrating "foreigners" are destroying every place they re-domesticate? The very thought of a non-white person sharing a state with me? ABOMINABLE! We'd better break out the crosses, soak them in gasoline, and drive them into the lawns of all these non-white border-jumpers... and burn them. Burn the crosses! Resepect the Kleagle! Respect the Grand Dragon! Long live the Klan! Racism-- the only perspective that makes any sense! Kill everyone who doesn't look exactly like you, and/or think exactly like you! Bigotry is power! Knowledge is for pointyheaded poindexters, not men of action! Those who refuse to destroy the immigrants are just cowards, sissies, pantywaists! Real men are like Mark schittStain.

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August 18, 2009 | url
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Cyberfarer said:

	Thank you, Chris For trashing the racists, including the phony intellectual racists like Mark Steyn, and treating them with all the respect they deserve. Bravo!
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August 18, 2009
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scott douglas said:

	... Sean, pretty DAMN sure I'm on the list of apostates and heretics to be burned at the stake along with the swarming, invading fer'ners, actually...ha...but I try to stay OUT of churches, so I'm not sure...
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August 18, 2009
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lonl said:

Actions speak louder than words Although this thread has it's serious side as well as laughs, I'm starting to wonder if it's worth the trouble to deal further with the current "political thought" of people like Steyn and Amis either seriously or with derision. Aren't they now just another pair of two-bit writers who know where their bread is buttered, (however much we might regret the decline in at least Amis' case)? Since 9/11 there has been rare unanimity in imperialist circles on the need to step up attacks on the third world generally and on the Islamic world in particular. A serious discussion as to why this is the case certainly continues to be in order and I'd like to see more of it on this site. One thing seems perfectly clear: the imperialists agree about the necessity (for them) of long-term war in Asia. But of course they can't just say that very obviously, since it sets them against the interests of almost everyone else. So, while their actions speak loudest, they promote all kind of hateful ideas in order to justify and enable all that murder - probably paying cheaply by the word. What won't penny dreadfuls like Steyn and Amis (let's throw in Christopher Hitchens while we're at it) write to maintain their little platform of "respect" and, one supposes, comfortable lives? Is it now even worth a witty riposte? I wonder.

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August 18, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

... Loni, I agree with you generally, but I also recognize that there are some people out there who are still learning about the landscape of global politics and the spin practiced by players such as Steyn or Amis. To the extent people still could be swayed by Steyn or Amis, I think it's healthy to counter the obnoxious spin those two characters offer. What I do not think healthy is to get into an inflamed pissing match with them. I try to take a more detached, semi-comic, slightly dismissive approach. Maybe that's just fanning flames, I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is, I think it better to highlight the truth, and the areas of agreement, rather than to sow division and antipathy. But I probably miss the mark on that theme, with my own behavior.

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August 18, 2009 | url
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SupaKraut said:

Tangas and Head Scarfs Yes, Steyn -- the scholar's scholar, statistician extraordinaire -- has perused the popular names for babies in two whole European cities, and has discovered -- gasp! -- that they are headed by "Mohammed," and also have other Islam-derived names among the top ranks. Uh, scary. The largest group of people coming from a "muslim" country here in Germany are the Turks, and the Kreuzberg District in Berlin is generally considered to be the second largest Turkish city after Istanbul. However most Turks here are second Generation and the problem is not that they are Muslim but that the males are mostly metrosexuals and the girls use way too much make up. And even the rapidly declining number of girls wearing head scarfs (like many VERY christian russian immigrants) hardly hide the fact that they are wearing tangas under their tight pants. They are Muslim like most people here are christian. Believe in Allah/God, never read Koran/Bible and most certainly don´t let the Creator interfere with their right to Party and have Sex. And did I mention that I also have a "muslim" name? I do! My daddy did not want to raise his kids in the "ISLAMIC Republic of Iran". Allahu Akbar.

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August 18, 2009
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scott douglas said:

	Unity of Humanity What a great thread...the Lives of the People go on, and They use crisis as a catalyst to personal development -- or, as a jump-off point to secure the spiritual future of their progeny! Let the Fascists beware!Fear no Evil!
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August 18, 2009
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Lester Ness said:

	I agree Amen and amen! I teach English in China and have muslims in every class. They are certainly not part of a "hive mind." I wait for the insane muslim-haters to give arabic numerals, coffee, and regular bathing, all of them introduced from the middle east in recent centuries.
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August 20, 2009
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