Muslim devotees pray during the Friday noon prayers during the World Muslim Congregation, also known as Biswa Ijtema, at Tongi, some 30 kilometers north of Dhaka on January 13, 2017. STR/AFP/Getty Images
In 10 years we will all be Muslims because of our stupidity, declared Italian Monsignor Carlo Liberati recently. In an interview with Catholic journal La Fede Quotidiana, the archbishop emeritus of Pompeii lamented Western Europes transition into secularism and what may ultimately cause a transition back out of it: the influx of massive numbers of Muslim migrants into the West and these immigrants robust birthrates. This trend was also noted by late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, who said in 2006, We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europewithout swords, without guns, without conquestwill turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. Of course, Archbishop Liberati was speaking loosely at best, and Gadhafi was speaking inaccurately but hopefully. Estimates in 2010 showed that Europe had 44 million Muslims; moreover, under current trends, the continent wont be entirely Muslim in a few decades, and especially not in just one decadethough trends can change. The Pew Research Center reported last July that the Muslim share of the population throughout Europe has grown about 1 percentage point a decade, from 4 percent in 1990 to 6 percent in 2010. This pattern is expected to continue through 2030, when Muslims are projected to make up 8% of Europes population. (Note: We could question these statistics accuracy. France, for example, prohibitsthe collecting of census information on race, ethnicity, or religionmaking a calculation of the Muslim population difficult.) Archbishop Liberati made the case that Western secularism and decadence have invited Islams rise; the idea being that a spiritual vacuum will draw in the only religious fire extant. Most secularists would counter that modernity will mold Europes Muslim generations as it has her Christian ones, with the siren of secularism slaying faith with science and reason. Tomorrow belongs to atheism. Yet the findings of demographic and sociological science dont actually back up that statement. Studies show that younger Muslim generations in Europe are actually more jihadist-orientedsome would say more piousthan their elders. There is, however, another factor that runs contrary to conventional wisdom. Over the next few decades, the world in general will become more religious, not less so. And Muslimswhose nations show little sign of decreasing religiosityare growing faster than any other religious group. Dont tell Salon, which last year ran an article titled, This is the end of marriage, capitalism and God. Finally! This contrary perception is explainable by way of something moderns so often warn against: ethnocentrism. It is true that faith in the West has been dying out, but an important factor is missed: westerners are dying out, too. Approximately 100 nations worldwideincluding nearly every Western nationhave fertility rates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman). Israel, sometimes considered part of the West, appears the only exception. Pew Research examined this matter in April 2016, writing, To be clear, the total number of religiously unaffiliated people (which includes atheists, agnostics and those who say they have no particular religion on censuses and surveys) is expected to rise, from 1.1 billion in 2010 to 1.2 billion in 2050. But this growth is projected to occur at the same time that other religious groupsand the global population overallare growing faster. These projections, Pew continued, which take into account demographic factors such as fertility, age composition and life expectancy, forecast that people with no religion will make up about 13% of the worlds population in 2050, down from roughly 16% as of 2010. This is largely attributable to the fact that religious nones are, on average, older and have fewer children than people who are affiliated with a religion. Moreover, heres another item from the everything-you-thought-you-knew-is-wrong file: while Catholicism is declining in the U.S., its adherents are increasing worldwide slightly in excess of the rate of population growth. Indeed, there is no historical example of a secular population perpetuating itself long term. As demographer Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at progressive think tank New America, wrote at NPR in 2011, For whatever reasons, adherents to fundamentalism continue to have comparatively large families, while childlessness and single-child families are becoming the norm among those who do not feel themselves commanded by God to go forth and multiply. The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default, explained Longman, a soft-spoken man who has pointed out that he himself is not churched. The Wests total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. So, the reports of religions death are largely exaggerated. Many see the present as a battle between secularism and religion and tomorrow as secularisms alone. However, the future will be, as the past has been, simply a matter of which religion will prevailand where. Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The Hill, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily and American Thinker. He has also contributed to college textbooks published by Gale Cengage Learning, has appeared on television and is a frequent guest on radio.
[h=1]Trump Blocks Syrian Refugees and Orders Mexican Border Wall to Be Built[/h]WASHINGTON President Trump on Wednesday began a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, ordering the immediate construction of a border wall with Mexico and aggressive efforts to find and deport unauthorized immigrants. He planned additional actions to cut back on legal immigration, including barring Syrian refugees from entering the United States. At the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Trump signed a pair of executive orders that paved the way for a border wall and called for a newly expanded force to sweep up immigrants who are in the country illegally. He revived programs that allow the federal government to work with local and state law enforcement agencies to arrest and detain unauthorized immigrants with criminal records and to share information to help track and deport them. He also planned to clamp down on legal immigration in another action expected as early as Thursday. An eight-page draft of that executive order, obtained by The New York Times, would indefinitely block Syrian refugees from entering the United States and bar all refugees from the rest of the world for at least 120 days. When the refugee program resumes, it would be much smaller, with the total number of refugees resettled in the United States this year more than halved, to 50,000 from 110,000.
It would also suspend any immigration for at least 30 days from a number of predominantly Muslim countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen while the government toughened its already stringent screening procedures to weed out potential terrorists. White House officials declined to comment on the coming plan, but in a wide-ranging interview that aired Wednesday on ABC, Mr. Trump acknowledged that it aimed to erect formidable barriers for those seeking refuge in the United States. Its going to be very hard to come in, Mr. Trump said. Right now, its very easy to come in.
He also said his administration would absolutely do safe zones in Syria to discourage refugees from seeking safety in other countries, and chided Europe and Germany in particular for accepting millions of immigrants. Its a disaster, whats happening there, Mr. Trump said. Taken together, the moves would turn the full weight of the federal government to fortifying the United States border, rounding up some of the 11 million people who are in the country illegally and targeting refugees, who are often among the worlds most vulnerable people. It is an aggressive use of presidential power that follows through on the nationalistic vision Mr. Trump presented during his presidential campaign. A nation without borders is not a nation, Mr. Trump said Wednesday at the Department of Homeland Security, where he signed the orders alongside the newly sworn-in secretary, John F. Kelly. Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders. The plans are a sharp break with former President Barack Obamas approach and what was once a bipartisan consensus to devise a path to citizenship for some of the nations illegal immigrants. Mr. Obama, however, angered many immigrant groups by deporting millions of unauthorized workers, largely during his first term. But Mr. Trump, whose campaign rallies were filled with chants from his supporters of build the wall, has vowed to go much further. He has often described unauthorized immigrants as criminals who must be found and forcibly removed from the United States, as he did again on Wednesday. We are going to get the bad ones out the criminals and the drug dealers and gangs and gang members, Mr. Trump said. The day is over when they can stay in our country and wreak havoc. We are going to get them out, and we are going to get them out fast. The president had invited the families of people killed by unauthorized immigrants to watch him sign the orders alongside Homeland Security employees, and he asked each of them to stand in turn, telling of the deaths of their relatives, which he said had inspired his policies. We hear you, we see you, and you will never, ever be ignored again, Mr. Trump said, contending that they had been victimized by open borders. GRAPHIC
The immigration orders drew furious condemnation from civil rights and religious groups as well as immigrant advocacy organizations. The groups described them as meanspirited, counterproductive and costly and said the new policies would raise constitutional concerns while undermining the American tradition of welcoming people from around the world. Theyre setting out to unleash this deportation force on steroids, and local police will be able to run wild, so were tremendously concerned about the impact that could have on immigrants and families across the country, said Joanne Lin, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. After todays announcement, the fear quotient is going to go up exponentially. Lynn Tramonte, the deputy director of Americas Voice Education Fund, an immigration advocacy group, said Mr. Trump was wasting no time taking a wrecking ball to the Statue of Liberty. She called the orders a dramatic, radical and extreme assault on immigrants and the values of our country. First Draft
The orders also rankled officials in countries around the world. President Enrique Pea Nieto of Mexico, who had planned to travel to Washington next week to meet with Mr. Trump, let it be known that he was considering canceling his trip, senior Mexican officials said. Mr. Trump has claimed that Mexico will ultimately pay for the wall, but officials there have repeatedly said they have no intention of doing so. Conservative organizations in the United States and some Republican lawmakers praised Mr. Trumps moves, saying they would usher in overdue enforcement of crucial homeland security laws that Mr. Obama had refused to carry out. This looks like a return to enforcing the immigration laws, which is something that President Obama strayed from and has not been prioritized in a very long time, said Tommy Binion, the director of policy outreach at the conservative-aligned Heritage Foundation. To have President Trump focus on the problems immigration is bringing us as a nation is a relief. Finally, we have a government that recognizes the tragedies that were facing. Mr. Trump will not be able to accomplish the goals laid out in the immigration orders by himself. Congress would have to appropriate new funding for the construction of a wall, which some have estimated could cost tens of billions of dollars. Nonetheless, Mr. Trump directed federal agencies to use existing funds as a start to the wall and formally called for the hiring of an additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 10,000 immigration officers.
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection By The New York Times
The order would threaten the nations roughly three dozen sanctuary cities jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal authorities seeking to detain unauthorized immigrants with losing federal grant money if they do not comply with such requests. At the same time, Mr. Trump is reviving a program called Secure Communities, ended by the Obama administration, in which federal officials use digital fingerprints shared by local law enforcement departments to find and deport immigrants who commit crimes. The provisions are chilling to many immigration advocates, who argued that they could sweep up unauthorized immigrants beyond the criminals Mr. Trump says he wants to target. Among those listed as priorities for removal are those who have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency, which would essentially include any undocumented worker who has signed an employment agreement in the United States. The order also includes a section that directs federal agencies to adjust their privacy policies to exclude unauthorized immigrants, in effect allowing the sharing of their personal identifying information, which could be used to track and apprehend them. With todays sweeping and constitutionally suspect executive actions, the president is turning his back on both our history and our values as a proud nation of immigrants, said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader. Wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on a border wall Mexico will never pay for, and punishing cities that do not want their local police forces forced to serve as President Trumps deportation dragnet, does nothing to fix our immigration system or keep Americans safe. The order on refugees is in line with a Muslim ban that Mr. Trump proposed during the campaign, though it does not single out any particular religion. It orders the secretary of state and the secretary of Homeland Security to prioritize those who are persecuted members of religious minorities, essentially ensuring that Christians living in predominantly Muslim countries would be at the top of the list. In order to protect Americans, the order states, we must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward our country and its founding principles. It says that for the time being, admitting anyone from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen is detrimental to the interests of the United States.
