Searching for Demographic Transition in the Muslim World
Though this trend has obviously been going on for a while, it's news to me, as discussed by Philip Jenkins at RealClearReligion: the Muslim world isn't monolithically out-reproducing the decadent West:
In just the last thirty years or so, those very Middle Eastern countries that used to teem with children and adolescents have gone through a startling demographic transformation. Since the mid-1970s, Algeria's fertility rate has collapsed from over 7 to 1.75, Tunisia's from 6 to 2.03, Morocco's from 6.5 to 2.21, Libya's from 7.5 to 2.96. Today, Algeria's rate is roughly equivalent to that of Denmark or Norway; Tunisia's is comparable to France.....
Just what is happening here? Everything depends on the changing attitudes and expectation of the women in these once highly-traditional societies. Across the region, women have become increasingly involved in higher education, and have moreover moved into full-time employment. That sea-change simply makes it unthinkable for women to manage a rampaging tribe of seven or eight children. Often, too, images of women's proper role in life have been upended by extended contacts with Europe. Migrants to France or Italy return home with changed attitudes, while families who stay at home find it hard to avoid the media portrayals of Western lives they see via cable and satellite dish. Maybe Europe and the Middle East are merging into one common Eurabia - but it's far from clear which side is doing a better job of imposing its opinions on the other. Presently, it looks as if the Maghreb is becoming European.
This could be good news for those who fear a thousand-year war with Islam (except that lots of those folks hate Europe as well.....)
Such a wrenching change cannot fail to have political implications. In a country with a Third World fertility rate, it is very unlikely that women will seek or be granted education: their designated career path as mothers is starkly clear. Meanwhile, adolescents and young men proliferate, and provide ample cannon fodder for armies or militias, to whom life is cheap. (Yemen's fertility rate is still over 5.0, Somalia's is 6.4). But then imagine a newer, more European society, in which men and women are intensely concerned about their nuclear families, and have invested their love and attention into just one or two offspring. As citizens become more educated, they are not prepared to accept the demagoguery and systematic corruption that has long passed for government in those regions.....
If the European precedent is anything to go by, that could well provide a model for religious developments in the Maghreb over the next decade or two. A society so dependent on women in the school and the workplace simply cannot support the kind of intransigent orthodoxies offered by the familiar Islamists. Extremists may not vanish overnight, but they will have to adapt substantially to present their message in a civil society with a powerful taste for democratic values and gender equality.
This trend as yet only applied to part of the Muslim world, but it is in line with general human population trends--with growth slowing--as Ronald Bailey has pointed out here at Reason.
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Strange as it may seem to some, Muslims are human beings too.
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Don't trust this. They're tricking us into complacency with false numbers, hiding their offspring. They will overtake us if we don't start shoring up our numbers.
Resistence is fertile.
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Hide yo kids, hide yo wives, and hide yo husbands; cuz dey be Jihadin' errybody up here!
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I think the big lesson here is that people have an enormous capacity to solve their own problems.
Those that are screaming about whatever malthusian flavor of the month and calling for collective sacrifice are doomed to always end up wearing it on their faces.
Overpopulation! Peak Oil! Oh my!
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I think the big lesson here is that people have an enormous capacity to solve their own problems.
Sooo...
...you now oppose US involvement in Libya?
If so, HURRAY!!!
If not...well the comedy writes itself.
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The Libyan Revolution is basically the Libyan people solving their own problems.
That's part of what makes it different from Iraq.
The American Revolution was basically the American people solving their own problems too.
You wouldn't give the French all the credit for the American Revolution, would you?
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It was a huge mistake on France's part to aid us. They were the big loser in the American Revolution, much more so than England.
The war basically bankrupted France and their invasion of England never happened because peace broke out.
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Not to mention it set the stage for their own revolution and the end of the monarchy.
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Not to mention they had the people they aided actually cheering on and supporting the revolution against them.
Jefferson would understand Iraqi/Afghani behavior.
TJ: Thanks for the help, King. Off with your head.
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"It was a huge mistake on France's part to aid us. They were the big loser in the American Revolution, much more so than England."
Well, it's possible that the Libyan Revolution could be about the Libyan people solving their own problems, and there still might be some important differences between what France did during the American Revolution and what we're doing in Libya.
I think the debt situation in France was already quite dire from the The Seven Years War. Also, adjusted for inflation, I think the French spent a lot more money on the American Revolution than the $1 billion or so we're spending on Libya.
If we're comparing apples to apples, the way France spent on the American Revolution is more like the $700 billion we've spent on Iraq. France spent a big chunk of its GDP on the Seven Years War and the American Revolution, more like what we're spending on Iraq and Afghanistan.
As a percentage of GDP, what we're spending on Libya is insignificant.
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But how can we complain about Teh Mooslim Domination if they aren't frighteningly fertile?
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Never underestimate the power of cognitive dissonance.
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Theirs or ours?
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BOTA
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Huh?
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Democracy, bonehead.
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The time factor is what is being ignored here. Muslim birthrates are dropping, but 20 - 30 years later, so yes they will still numerically dominate the population.
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um...something tells me we'll survive.
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As long as we know how to love we know we'll stay alive.
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OT: Just saw a promo for Ken Burns next project, "Prohibition".
I wonder if he'll yearn for the good ol' days. -
I predict the central theme is that it was primarily due to the white man trying to keep the black man dow...huh, okay, Ken finally gets one right.
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Extremists may not vanish overnight, but they will have to adapt substantially to present their message in a civil society with a powerful taste for democratic values and gender equality.
So they'll recruit female suicide bombers instead of only males.
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which in the long term will help the demographic shift. That islamist female suicide bomber could have had 7 little bombers.
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Extremists may not vanish overnight, but they will have to adapt substantially to present their message in a civil society with a powerful taste for democratic values and gender equality.
You know who else presented their message in a civil society ... ?
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Oooh! Oooh! Can I guess???
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UConn is one of the youngest, fastest, and best teams I have ever seen play basketball. You are going to fall in love with their style of game.
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best way to reduce birth rates is through education. It's incredible to see the side by side of literacy rates vs. birth rates for countries. The countires with the highest rates of illiteracy have the highest birth rates, such as afghanistan with 8 births per woman of child bearing age.
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It's the fact that they don't have an equitable justice system that girls are forced into marriage, and breeding. I don't see how reading and writing 'don't rape me' is going to lower the birth rate.
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"I don't see how reading and writing 'don't rape me' is going to lower the birth rate."
Of course you don't; you're an ignoramus who bleeves only force can have an effect.
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My little mudslinging boy, where did I suggest force?
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"My little mudslinging boy, where did I suggest force?"
My big stupid shit, you don't have to "suggest" it; you leave no other possibility.
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My big stupid shit, you don't have to "suggest" it; you leave no other possibility.
I'm dedicating my story tonight to you for your lack of honor
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Hey! Over here!
LOOOVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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you
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Of course you do, you're angry that you can't have sex with me and you have a small dick.
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I will never fuck you-get the hell over it
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LIAR! You so want to fuck me. All men want to fuck me!
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The two couldn't possibly be related - amIright???
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Except that education lowers the birth rate within countries. In the US, the more highly educated the women, the lower their birth rates, and there's only one justice system. It's about the opportunity costs of having more children; the more educated the woman, the higher the opportunity costs of having children. Education will not only increase the opportunity costs, but will allow the women to write "don't rape me' in Latin even.
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Ca 1910: "The Irish have too many kids! They're going to take over!"
Ca 1930: "The Blacks have too many kids! They're going to take over!"
Ca 1970: "The Hispanics have too many kids! They're going to take over!"
Ca 2010: "The Muslims have too many kids! They're going to take over!"
Pretty sure I see a trend here, and it's not "having too many kids". -
We feel their pain
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I feel pain when I try to think.
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They were right about the Irish. The most common ancestry in the US is Irish/German mix. The other trends are still in effect, so time will tell.
Disclaimer:
I'm not racist. Some of my best friends are German. -
and we still don't want the Irish
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That's right!
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Kemba and the Kids bitches!!!
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Extremists may not vanish overnight, but they will have to adapt substantially to present their message in a civil society with a powerful taste for democratic values and gender equality.
Uhm.
Somebody's dreaming here. In the same vein as one certain GWB person that we all know.
"More education" does not automatically equal "democratic values". Nor does it automatically equal "no more extremists". Whom, I'm sure, will not be reading or getting into any of that newfangled education stuff. Everybody knows that extremists are most uneducated dolts on the planet.
In fact, if Muslims actually have half a brain amongst them all, their aversion to democracy as we now know it will be quite extreme.
Then we may need to fear them taking over. Until then we just need to worry about them blowing up phone booths, and the occasional lucky hit on an airliner.
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Everybody knows that extremists are most uneducated dolts on the planet.
If that is the case (which I imagine it is) shouldn't more education create more people who are unlikely to become extremists, thus reducing the numbers of extremists over time?
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I guess I should have preceeded my post with [Danger Will Robinson! Sarcasm! Sarcasm!].
The people who pulled off 9/11 were anything but uneducated idiots.
My point is that idiots are not the threat, the "extemists" we have to worry about are already reasonably well educated even by Western standards.
Education and westernization may change the Muslim world, but we're dreaming if we believe it's going to do away with their propensity to terrorism.
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Everybody knows that extremists are most uneducated dolts on the planet.
Harvard alumni would disagree with you.
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I don't have a Koran, but if get one, what happens if the freezer?
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Lexical analyzers, how to tehy work?
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"The powerful taste of democracy", unless one is a politician I fail to see the powerful taste . Putting an X on a piece of paper for a politician who will not probably not win, then for the next 5 years I have to pay taxes to a politician who did win. The politician, who lives off half my days labour, then points the finger at me saying I am the enemy of the democratic masses. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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Bad tastes are powerful. See how long they linger?
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It'd be nice if someone just nuked the muslim world and was done with it already.
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Science, the bots grow violent!
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I agree. Militant bots are not a good sign.
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But what about the Mormons?
Even worse - what if the Mormons convert the Muslims???
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I would rather live in Utah then Iran.
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