The doom of Europe?

Mark Steyn, of National Review, contemplates the demographic and spiritual doom of Europe.

Having duly noted the dippy newage beliefs and practices of some post-Christian "spiritual" folks in the West, Steyn notes:

I’ve been a demography bore for years now — pointing out how aging childless French, Belgian, and Dutch populations are surrendering their turf to young fecund Muslims — but, at the risk of piling too many doomsday scenarios atop one another, it’s worth noting that Islam is advancing not just by outbreeding but also by conversion....

The ... “reverts” — as Islam calls converts — are not merely the Muslim equivalents of the Richard Gere Buddhists and Tom Cruise Scientologists but the vanguard of something bigger. As English and Belgian and Scandinavian cities Islamify, their inhabitants will face a choice between living as a minority and joining the majority: Not all but many will opt for the latter. At the very minimum, Islam will meet the same test as the hippy-dippy solstice worship does in Vermont: It will seem environmentally appropriate. For many young men, it already provides the sense of identity that the vapid nullity of multiculturalism disdains to offer.

As for the gals, I was startled in successive weeks to hear from both Dutch and English acquaintances that they’ve begun going out “covered.” The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore. The English lady lives in a swank part of London but says pretty much the same thing. Both felt there was not just a physical but a psychological security in being dressed Muslim. They’re not “reverts,” but, at least for the purposes of padding the public space, they’re passing for Muslim in public....

Will we live to see the imposition of sharia law in western Europe, either by demographically-driven popular vote or through intimidation, a la Yeats' famous poem? ("The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.")

Steyn goes on to suggest that Pope Benedict (the former archconservative Cardinal Ratzinger) "foresees dark days ahead and his job as being to save European Catholicism". (European Protestantism, sadly, isn't up to the challenge, in Steyn's opinion.)

Is it really so paranoid to wonder whether the growing numbers of Muslims in Europe will demand the imposition of their form of theocracy if and when they get enough political pull to do so, as suggested by Bat Ye'or in her book Eurabia?

It's a new form of the old question about whether a tolerant and free society can survive when large numbers of its inhabitants demand repression. But, perhaps, with a new urgency.