I came across a post on Apolyton from a Communist, Atheist, Slovakian who made a thread declaring himself to be Islamophobic and no longer ashamed of it. Points were raised about how Europe was gonna be a majority Muslim in 20 years, as is often said. Then the conversation turned to ask why the United States hasn’t had any issues with Islamic extremists. The reply was that we have lots of Christian extremists instead (which is a whole other level of BS but I didn’t address it). Someone rightly pointed out that the best equivalent to Europe’s Muslim “problem” is Blacks and other various races here.

I think that is a more accurate comparison. But things have changed a great deal in the last 40 years. Heck, we are likely to see a black president in the next year. So not only have we made tremendous progress over the last 40 years, the size of the “problem” we have here is larger than Europe.

Everyone talks all the time about how Muslims are “taking over” Europe. It is utter nonsense. Lets look at some numbers:

Muslims are 7% and 8% of the population in France, 5.8% in the Netherlands, 5% in Denmark, just over 4% in Switzerland and Austria, and almost 3 per cent in the United Kingdom.

If we use blacks, or even all non-whites, as our American equivalent the numbers are strikingly different.

In the United States blacks make up 12.2% of the population (much higher than any country in Europe). Plus Hispanics make up 14.8% of the population and Asians/Indians/Mixed/other are another 13.64%. So in total, non-whites are over 40% of our population.

Unlike the crazy predictions in Europe, it is far more likely and certain that in a few decades there will be a non-white majority. And the majority of us are ok with that.

Also, of that 60% white population we are still not nearly as homogeneous as individual European countries either. Italians, Germans, Brits, Russians, French and all the rest make up our white population. All sorts of different religions and demoninations too. That alone caused trouble in the past, but now we’ve totally gotten over it. Soon we’ll be entirely over the race thing too.

If France is having riots and predicting doom & gloom with 7 to 8% Muslim population, my advice is to get a fricken grip.

Or maybe all you elitist Eurocoms should stop and think for a moment about your conservative, bigoted, redneck, backwards cousins across the pond. Then perhaps you’ll realize that we have far more successfully, humanely, and comfortably stitched together a cosmopolitan and tolerant culture than Europe ever has or will. We certainly have had many problems along the way, but we’re stronger and better for it. Our nation didn’t come crashing down because of our diversity we became the world’s only super power.

So, in summary:

USA
Diversity
Muslims
Islamic radicals
Europe

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Personal, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.