When I tentatively venture to share some of my sceptical views with friends I am often told that Muslims are a tiny percentage of the UK population, that the vast majority are moderate in their beliefs, and that I have no right to judge them unless I have a thorough, scholarly knowledge of Islamic theology. Any objections that Islam is the most militant of the major religions, that it seems stuck in a bygone age, that Muslims seem unwilling to adapt to Western norms of dress and behaviour, that Muslim family size is a problem, that radicalisation of young male Muslims is deeply worrying, are met with accusations of lslamophobia. Predictions of imminent white demographic decline in Europe mean nothing to SJWs (Godefridi, 2017). The mildest rebuke would be ‘You worry too much’ and the strongest ‘You’re an anti-Muslim bigot’. Well, plainly as an atheist I am anti-religious, and I perceive Islam as anti-intellectual in its reliance on Quranic faith and inability to embrace modern rationality and science — as does one of its most famous apostates (Ali, 2015). Certainly I can see that most ordinary Muslims are not terrorists, and yet whenever the identity of Islamist terrorists from Luton, Birmingham or elsewhere is discovered, surprised friends and family members typically say that ‘he just seemed a regular friendly guy’.
Abu Hamza al-Masri is an Egyptian and was an imam at Finsbury Park mosque, a believer in sharia law and an Islamic caliphate. Famous for having two hook hands, he has eight children, and was imprisoned for inciting violence and racial hatred, eventually being extradited to the USA and imprisoned there for life for hostage-taking and other crimes. At one point he counter-sued in the UK for race hate, the charges for which amounted to £1 million in legal aid. Hamza utilised EU Court of Human Rights laws to stay in the UK for many years. Abu Qatada, a Jordanian and radical Islamist, and an anti-Semite, claimed asylum in the UK using a false passport, was imprisoned under anti-terrorism laws, but used EU human rights law to resist deportation to Jordan. Deportation while fitting for an agenda of natural justice has proved extremely difficult in practice (Dixon, 2017). While in Britain, it is estimated Qatada was supported on benefits payments to the tune of at least £500,000 and possibly up to £3 million. Anjem Choudary is a British-born radical Islamic activist of Pakistani descent involved in helping to train terrorists, who supported the actions of the 7/7 bombers, and spread the belief that Islam opposes democracy. He was convicted in 2016 for supporting ISIS. Often known as a hate preacher, Choudary has four children and was reported to be receiving £25,000 annually in state benefits. He has boasted about the growth of Islam and its gradual takeover of parts of the world, especially in Britain. He has called for the execution of the Pope.
We hear of many such accounts where the common theme is that a fanatical Muslim moves from one country to another, preaches radical and violent doctrine, incites violence, lives off state benefits, has a large family, claims legal aid and uses human rights laws year after year to avoid being deported. The typical cry of moderate Muslims and SJWs is that these are not representative of Islam, yet their human rights must be respected, and any terrorism they spawn is probably deserved by the UK for its military interventions in Muslim countries. A majority of the British public would agree that they are exploiting the naïvety and gullibility of leftist apologists — colloquially, taking the piss — while they plot the downfall of the secular West.
A good summary of defence of the Islamic presence in Europe is found in Plenel (2016). This short book reads like an impassioned sermon against Islamophobia and xenophobia. Plenel links Islamophobia in France closely with anti-Semitism and often conflates right-wing with far-right. Muslims are made scapegoats for all social and economic ills, he insists. As a former Trotskyist and active left-wing investigative journalist, it is not surprising that Plenel takes the position he does, but it is surprising that his argument is composed mainly of moral-emotional appeals and relatively little detailed analysis and engagement with counter arguments. He believes that slavery, colonialism and the Holocaust were all of a piece, all based on hatred and dehumanisation of the Other by a barbarous West convinced of its own superiority. Although he briefly mentions some Islamist terror attacks, it is evident that he wants to minimise these and focus on the unwelcoming attitude of many French people to Muslims, Roma and other minorities in ‘our rainbow France’. Fair enough, he cites the murder of Ahmed Merabet, the Algerian-origin policeman who died outside the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2015. Muslims are a treasured part of France itself, in Plenel’s view, and it is madness to attack part of ourselves. What he appears not to see is the sheer scale of Muslim immigration, cultural dissonance, and expanding impact, and the real difference between today’s phenomenon of large, problematic new communities and the non-threatening but scapegoated Jewish communities in Germany in the 1930s. Plenel is unconcerned with fears like those of his compatriot Renaud Camus, whose concept of a demographic ‘great replacement’ of whites by non-whites has gained traction (Williams, 2017).
Sayyid Qutb was a Muslim Brotherhood activist who was shocked when he visited the USA in the mid-20th century at the immorality he perceived everywhere, and not only in everyday life but in Christian churches. For him, ‘the whole world, from decadent Cairo to barbarous New York, was in a state of jahiliyya. He saw the West as a gigantic brothel, steeped in animal lust, greed, and selfishness. Human thought, in the West, was “given the status of God”’ (Buruma & Margalit, 2004). Jahiliyya refers to the sinful state of man before Muhammad’s revelation. Qutb was a radical Muslim but there are some fundamentalist Christians to match him in theological zeal. He was also against ‘jazzy hymns’ and dancing, he was intensely anti-Semitic, and uncompromisingly opposed to any Muslim appeasement of the corrupt West. In this view, not only white Western materialism and black hedonism are evil, but weak Islam too. We can see here that Quranic purity appeals to some just as Biblical simplicity and authority does. Human thought is of no consequence in this view. It is probably an unpopular view, but I believe our modern attachments to pleasure, to perpetual entertainment, to the arts and media, reveal a common preference for what is simple over what is difficult, for example sustained reason, science, and hard work. Most people are repelled by the ‘disenchantment of the world’ and are willing to embrace non-rational scriptures, novel-reading, social media, and so on, rather than thinking hard. Qutb’s form of Islam is not only anti-hedonistic but anti-scientific too, and Western SJWs, however opposed to Islamophobia, would not recognise Qutb’s vision of social justice as anything like their own (Qutb, 2000). While Qutb’s vision of Islam may not be the most prominent one in Britain, it is being fomented.
On 31 October 2017 Sayfullo Saipov, an Islamic Uzbekistan national and father of three children, deliberately drove a truck into people in Manhattan, killing eight and injuring eleven. He left the truck and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before being shot and arrested. He had entered the USA in 2010 and had permanent residence due to the diversity immigrant visa, a generous random selection process also known as the green card lottery. This awards 50,000 visas annually to people from countries that have had low rates of immigration. Probably very few in the UK had ever heard of this scheme before this event. Now it can be regarded as a true lottery, in the sense that one or two winners will turn out to be bad for the USA (an Egyptian immigrant killed two people in 2002), and innocent people who happen to be around die so that Islamists like Saipov can carry out their perverted religious intentions. The response from the Muslim community, as so often, was muted, indeed feeble, amounting to merely disowning him and fearing an Islamophobic backlash. Likewise SJWs, who immediately turned on Donald Trump and Islamophobes instead of Saipov. Amid all this, it is forgotten that the simple-minded Qutb and ISIS theology of medieval monotheism and associated hatred that drives people like Saipov is responsible for intentionally killing civilians in the name of Allah (ISIS, 2017). When we invite or allow Muslims and their relatives into our countries we import at best unknown qualities and at worst this kind of sanctioned terrorism. Scholarly at
tempts at challenging the radical Islamist theology of hate unfortunately appear not to have much real impact, which should not surprise us when we reflect on centuries of intra-religious disputes and wars (Stuart & Ali, 2014).
8
Population Concerns
World population stands at about 7.5 billion, projected to rise to at least 9 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. The population of the UK currently stands at about 67 million. A city like London has a population of over 8.5 million (much more when one counts outer London), larger than any other European city unless metropolitan areas in Paris are added and compared, or unless Moscow is considered European. England is the second most densely populated country in the EU (next to Holland), and the ninth most populated country in the world. In relation to its land mass the only ways in which housing can be expanded to accommodate increasing immigration and larger families are building upwards in cities or outwards across land not yet built on. This is not only about housing, however, but also the schools, hospitals, workplaces, shops, prisons and roads needed to support a larger population. Land is finite. Concern is always expressed about any decline in population, yet the question of optimal population is rarely openly discussed, or the very suggestion is hysterically conflated with Nazi-style genocide, or unworkable human-rights-denying Chinese one-child policies. But seriously — how might we define ‘overcrowded’? Not so long ago, news stories of Japanese overcrowding made British observers incredulous: 120 million people on those narrow islands, crowded and tense cities, people sleeping in cubicles, fierce competition for schools and jobs, rising suicide rates. And that’s in a country with massive homogeneity and very little multiculturalism.
John Calhoun famously studied the behaviour of rats in highly overcrowded conditions (Calhoun, 1962). He noted that in natural conditions rats were self-regulating and limited their own population size. In associated mouse experiments Calhoun kept mice in limited spaces; he fed them well and they were free from predators. Their population increased rapidly and their behaviour became aberrant — poor parenting and wounding of young, and many examples of unnatural, chaotic aggression. Eventually the mice became solitary, disorganised and depopulated. Calhoun and others speculated that a similar sorry fate lay in store for humans (and see Woodley of Menie et al., 2017a). We should note social brain theory here too, according to which our millennia of living closely together, depending on each other, and constantly having to monitor our own and others’ behaviours, moods and actions, puts great stress on us. Some cannot contain this amount of stress and become mentally ill, yet it may also be the case that with ever increasing population and urban density comes increasing subclinical stress. The point of these examples is to suggest that too much material plenty, underpinned by a welfare net, in increasingly overcrowded environments, when added to the superdiversity of migrants, is a recipe for disaster. Recall the introduction of rabbits to Australia in the early 19th century, leading to extensive reproduction and ecological damage. Note that no comparison of migrants with rodents or rabbits is intended here — the more we are all squeezed into a small space, the more we all suffer. Consider too these phenomena, not long ago quite alien to the UK: widespread incidence of large but fatherless black families and a causal relationship with crime, first cousin marriages, and large families in polygamous settings. Even to mention these is to invite accusations of racism. But all these phenomena challenge the illusion of a happy multicultural melting pot.
Oscar Wilde suggested ‘the only possible society is oneself’ and the growth of single person households might support this quip. But most of us form exclusive partnerships, we form cliques, teams, gangs, clans, ethnoclasses and tribes. Dunbar (2011) may or may not be right about the optimal number of people we can relate to being 150 (based on social brain theory, typical village sizes, etc.), but most of us do have a tendency to split into smaller groups and to dislike crowds. Trust is difficult in very large groups, and tasks often lose focus. It may be that smaller population countries in relation to size of territory, like Denmark, New Zealand and Canada, tend towards effective socialism. It may also be that large countries like China and Russia have been able to survive relatively well due to longstanding traditional cultures, a high degree of homogeneity, and strong leaders. The modern USA differs from the UK in being a large land mass and being formed as a new nation only 500 years ago out of mainly enterprising European settlers. But today US culture is being torn apart by its white, black and Hispanic antagonists. Britain, a small land mass and once relatively homogeneous, is now overcrowded and torn by excessive multiculturalism. The EU was formed without due regard for centuries of tribal tradition and cultural differences, and is now becoming fractured. In most discussions of immigration, integration and social cohesion, almost no serious thought is given to intergroup dynamics, optimal group size, and threats to group integrity.
The population of the poorest continent on the planet, Africa, is currently about 1.2 billion and predicted to reach 2.4 billion by 2050. Nigeria alone (the size of Texas) is predicted to grow to a population of 330 million by 2050 and one billion by the end of this century. This is unsustainable within Africa and, as we already see, millions of Africans believe they have no choice but to migrate to Europe, and such an influx is also unsustainable. This is not being addressed. The argument that Africans must learn to provide better for themselves and to practise effective birth control is regarded as racist by anti-Westerners. Pakistan is rated by some counts the fifth most populated country at 207 million, projected to double by 2050. Sixty per cent of these are under 30, a third of the population live in poverty, only 58% are literate, and birth control is resisted mainly on religious (Islamic) grounds (Constable, 2017). ‘The more Muslims grow, the more their enemies will fear them’, says one man, Jan Mohammed, in Pakistan, who has 38 children by three wives; while another, Gulzar Khan, aged 57, has 36 children, hopes for more, and expects Allah to provide (Yahoo, 2017). All those who are in denial about the very real limitations of space and resources insist that Europe and the West generally has ample space and a responsibility to accept and support all deserving immigrants and their families. It is an unrecognised Malthusian irony that immigration into Britain can be called colonial karma. In the 19th century Malthus advocated emigration from Britain as one means of relieving its growing population, and in the process spreading the ‘British world’. As suggested in Fedorowich and Thompson (2017), ‘it can be argued that the whole raison d’ètre of Britain’s empire lay in the constant shifting of people between different parts of the world in ways that were likely to destabilise old identities and forge new ones’.
England’s population in 1700 was about 5 million, and in 1800 approaching 8 million. After that, the UK’s total population escalated more rapidly, from 11 million in 1800 to 38 million in 1900. In 2011 it was calculated that 12.7% of the population was foreign born but almost 20% of people now identify as belonging to an ethnic minority (Casey, 2016). In 2015 about eight million foreign-born people lived in the UK, 3.2 million of those being from the EU. 28.2% of births are now to foreign-born mothers. In 2007–10, 4,000–5,000 people annually were expelled for criminal offences. It has been reported that in in 2015 over 84,000 people were stopped from entering illegally (Daily Express, 10 February, 2017), and 200 people have recently been caught every day trying to enter the UK. The Home Office confesses to ‘losing 56,000 foreigners’ who were destined to be deported but absconded, a figure that includes 700 criminals (Mail Online, 2 November, 2017). From immigrants’ point of view, the ability of their host country to accommodate them is not at issue. Migrants do not study the economics, resources and demographics of their destinations; rather, they know by gossip, anecdote and social media which are the most favourable, and sometimes they are given falsely positive information by their people traffickers. Whether genuinely desperate refugees or economic opportunists, migrants naturally have their own interests at heart. It is highly unlikely that any calculate t
he impact they and their families will have on their hosts. Africans fleeing inhospitable conditions at home are looking for a better life and in some cases find it. But it’s often pointed out that few immigrants readily adapt to Western norms, instead bringing their own culture and behaviour with them. Some say hopefully and even confidently that in time Muslims will reduce their family size to closer to British norms of two children. At the moment such optimism seems misplaced. It has been pointed out too that Muslim parents tend to begin having children from an earlier age, thus producing more generations.
London’s population is growing at twice the rate of other parts of Britain, much of the growth due to immigration (Osborne, 2016). If 200,000 foreigners arrive in London each year, it is not surprising that London has a housing crisis. Yet leftists repeatedly blame the deficit largely on Conservative failures to build more houses. London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, consequently calls for 66,000 new homes to be built annually in and around London, 65% of which should be ‘affordable’ (Booth, 2017). Perhaps there is no connection at all between Pakistani immigration into London and the large sizes of many Pakistani Muslim families, but Khan’s parents came from Pakistan to London in the 1960s, and had eight children. Surely continuing large-scale immigration into London by people who have large families (and unknown associated chain immigration) has some effect on housing stock? And surely our inability to discuss matters of excessive immigration and population control, however ‘explosive’ a political issue, warrants some investigation? Building more and more houses, and affordable (subsidised) homes is not the only conceivable solution. The UK’s Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Sajid Javid, stated in February 2017 that ‘only 37% of future housing demands are due to immigration’, but Migration Watch UK (2017b) regards this as ‘thoroughly misleading’, arguing that ‘in the last decade nearly 90% of additional households in England have been headed by someone born abroad’. Mr Javid, whose Pakistani parents had five sons, and who himself has four children, may not understand, or may play down, the very real connection between high immigration, large families, and housing needs. He also failed to observe that today’s household of multiple single young Polish men seem content to live in crowded dormitory conditions but sooner or later will probably marry, have children, and need housing.
Excessive Immigration Page 12
