Europe - Islamicization From Within

I had previously posted here and here on the rising tide of Islam in Europe based on information from Gates of Vienna. Today, in the Washington Times, Paul Belien takes a sobering look at Muslim's voting patterns and their impact on European politics.

For almost four decades, Muslims have been the fastest-growing segment of the population in Western Europe. As a consequence, the Muslim vote is becoming ever more important. This first became apparent in the September 2002 general elections in Germany, when Socialist candidate Gerhard Schroeder beat Conservative opponent Edmund Stoiber with the slightest of margins -- barely 8,864 votes. Germany is home to almost 700,000 Turkish-German voters -- in addition to nearly 3 million non- (or rather not-yet-) voting Turkish immigrants. The Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Schroeder.

They did so again in 2005, though then the native, or "German-German," vote went to the right to such an extent that it resulted in a narrow victory for Christian-Democrat candidate Angela Merkel. As time goes by, however, it will become ever more difficult to counter the Muslim voting bloc.

Last year the Muslim vote tipped the balance toward the left in the local elections in both the Netherlands and Belgium. . . .

Most of the immigrants who came to Europe during the past decades were attracted by the generous welfare benefits that Western Europe lavishly bestows on the "underprivileged." Today, as more and more young Muslims reach voting age, European parties have begun to cater to Islamist causes. Left-wing politicians in Europe introduce separate swimming hours for women in public pools, impose halal food on cafeterias and demand that schools banish the Holocaust from history lessons.

Pundits who predict that Western Europe is about to witness a shift to the anti-immigrant right are mistaken. This trend will be over by the end of the decade, when the impact of the immigrant vote will move European politics dramatically to the left. The right's chances of winning elections are dwindling.

. . . Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the ruling center-right UMP party, . . . is speaking out loudly against an Islamist takeover of French urban neighborhoods, such as the Parisian suburbs. If Mr. Sarkozy's strategy proves to be the right one, it shows that many French have come to realize that these elections offer the last chance to preserve something of the old France.

Some politicians on the European far-right, however, seem convinced that the Islamization of Western Europe has become inevitable. Like the parties of the left, they hope to counter electoral decline by striking a deal with the Islamists. This explains why last week Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigrant National Front in France, emphasized that, unlike Mr. Sarkozy, he does not want to "clean the suburbs out with a high pressure hose." Mr. Le Pen told the Muslim youths in the suburbs: "You are the branches of the French tree. You are as French as can be." . . .

Read the entire article here.