The Islamophobic myth that Muslims are engaged in the gradual but inexorable conquest of the West takes different forms, depending on where you live.
In Tea Party circles in the USA you’ll encounter bizarre conspiracy theories about Muslim Brotherhood operatives having infiltrated the White House or even the top ranks of the Republican Party. In Europe the Islamic conquest myth more usually takes the form of scaremongering over demography – though US Islamophobes promote this version of the myth as well, presenting it as a horrible warning of the fate that will befall North America if it goes down the same road as Western Europe.
A notorious YouTube video entitled “Muslim Demographics” has proved particularly popular in such circles, having so far attracted nearly 14 million viewers. It claims that, as a result of population growth within European Muslim communities, “in 39 years France will be an Islamic Republic” and Germany “will be a Muslim state by the year 2050”.
This paranoid statistical gibberish has been debunked many times, notably by Doug Saunders in his book The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West? But that didn’t prevent The Commentator blog, which is an arm of the neocon-Zionist outfit the Henry Jackson Society, from posting an article last week under the headline “The Islamic future of Britain”. Subtitled “Britain is in denial. If population trends continue, by the year 2050, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation”, the article presents the usual nonsense about demographic change bringing about the downfall of western civilisation.
