MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 13 /Christian Newswire/ -- World Congress of Families expressed satisfaction that the British Broadcasting System (BBC) has finally acknowledged...that Europe is being enveloped in demographic winter.
According to a BBC report broadcast earlier this month, "Population levels across many parts of the developed world are declining, but this is particularly noticeable in former Eastern Bloc states, where the number of children being born has plummeted within a generation." The BBC noted that "In 1974, 100,000 babies were born in Slovakia – now barely 50,000 a year."
World Congress of Families International Secretary Allan C. Carlson observed: "Of the 10 nations with the lowest birthrates worldwide, nine are in Europe. According to the European Union, the average birthrate for the continent is 1.37 children per woman – well below replacement level (roughly 2.1)
Eastern European and the former Soviet Union are particularly hard hit. The birthrate for the Czech Republic is 1.18, for Russia 1.26 and for Belarus, 1.21. Russia's population is contracting by three-quarters of a million a year. Absent massive immigration, it's expected to lose half its population by the middle of this century.
But Western Europe is also experiencing serious population decline. In the next 50 years, Germany could lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany.
"The media is just beginning to grapple with an impending crisis that the World Congress of Families has been talking about for years," Carlson declared. "At World Congress of Families II, in Geneva in 1999, Francisco Tatad, then a member of the Philippine Senate, warned of Europe's coming population bust."
"Fewer children and a graying population will create a series of crises Europeans are only beginning to discern," Carlson disclosed, "including severe labor shortages, declining tax revenue supporting spiraling social budgets and fewer and fewer active adults to care for more and more elderly."
Carlson called on Europe's leaders to begin exploring pro-family solutions to a looming catastrophe.
"Wilders wrote in the newspaper De Volkskrant that the Koran urges Muslims "to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women, and to establish an Islamic state by force."
"The lawmaker's statement was condemned by the Dutch government, which said Wilders had hurt community relations in the Netherlands and was an insult to the majority of Muslims who eschew violence."
Also in the Netherlands, an Iranian born politician, Ehsan Jami, who heads a Dutch group for "ex-muslims", and who had previously called Mohammed a "terrible man" was attacked for a third time this weekend. From the Scotsman:
"Mr Jami, 22, was set upon by three assailants of non-Dutch origin at the weekend, the third time he had been attacked, his adviser, Afshin Ellian, said.
"Mr Jami, a local politician for the Dutch Labour party, was "too emotional" to discuss the attack.
"Protective measures will be put in place," a spokesman for the National Co-ordinator for Counter-terrorism said.
"The Committee for Ex-Muslims, which Mr Jami leads, aims to support former Muslims and lift taboos on domestic violence and violation of rights within Muslim communities. Similar organisations exist in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia.
"Leaving Islam is considered a crime punishable by death in some Muslim-majority countries.
"The Netherlands is home to a million Muslims, among a total population of some 16 million."
From Survivals and New Arrivals by Hilaire Belloc: "There remains... another indirect supporter of Neo-Paganism: a supporter which indeed hates all Paganism but hates the Catholic Church much more...I mean Mohammedan religion: Islam."
"Islam presents a totally different problem from that attached to any other religious body opposed to Catholicism. To understand it we must appreciate its origins, character and recent fate. Only then can we further appreciate its possible or probable future relations with enemies of the Catholic effort throughout the world."
How did Islam arise?
"It was not as our popular historical textbooks would have it, a "new religion." It was a direct derivative from the Catholic Church. It was essentially, in its origin, a heresy: like Arianism or Albigensians."
"When the man who produced it (and it is more the creation of one man than any other false religion we know) was young, the whole of the world which he knew...was Catholic. It was still, though in the process of transformation, the Christian Roman Empire, stretching from the English Channel to the borders of his own desert."
"Now what Mohamet did was this. He took over the principal doctrines of the Catholic Church--one personal God, Creator of all things; the immortality of the soul; an eternity of misery or blessedness--and no small part of Christian morals as well...But at the same time he attempted an extreme simplification."
"Many another heresiarch has done this, throwing overboard such and such too profound doctrines, and appealing to the less intelligent by getting rid of mysteries through a crude denial of them.
"With the energy of his personality behind that highly simplified, burning enthusiasm, he first inflamed his own few desert folk, and they in turn proceeded to impose their new enthusiasm very rapidly over vast areas of what had been until then a Catholic civilization; and their chief allies in this sweeping revolution were politically the doctrine of equality and spiritually the doctrine of simplicity. Everybody troubled by the mysteries of Catholicism tended to join them; so did every slave or debtor who was oppressed by the complexity of a higher civilization.
"For centuries the struggle between Islam and the Catholic Church continued. It had varying fortunes, but for something like a thousand years the issue remained doubtful. It was not until the year 1700 that Christian culture seemed for a time-- to be definitely the master. "
"During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Mohammedan world fell under a kind of palsy...At last by the end of the nineteenth century, more than nine-tenths of the Mohammedan population of the world...had fallen under the government of nominally Christian nations, especially of England and France."
"On this account our generation came to think of Islam as something naturally subject to ourselves. We no longer regarded it as a rival to our own culture, we thought of its religion as a sort of fossilized thing about which we need not trouble."
"That was almost certainly a mistake. We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future. Perhaps if we lose our faith it will rise."
"Remember that our Christian civilization is in peril of complete breakdown. An enemy would say that it is living upon its past; and certainly those who steadfastly hold its ancient Catholic doctrine stand on guard as it were in a state of siege; they are a minority both in power and in numbers. Upon such a state of affairs a steadfast, permanent, convinced, simple philosophy and rule of life, intensely adhered to, and close at hand, may now that the various sections of the world are so much interpenetrating one and the other, be of effect."
"We must remember that the subjection of the Mohammedan -a purely political subjection -was accomplished by nothing more subtle or enduring than a superiority in weapons and mechanical invention. We must further remember that this superiority dates from a very short time ago."
"A little more and there will cease that which our time has taken for granted, the physical domination of Islam by the disintegrated Christendom we know."
Monsignor Georg Gaenswein speaks with the full authority of the Catholic Church about a Muslim domination of Europe.
He made it clear that Europe's Christian roots are under threat from a resurgent Islam.
“Attempts to Islamise the West should not be brushed off ...And the danger for the identity of Europe, which is linked to that, should not be ignored out of wrong-headed respect.”
He also spoke of Islam not being a single force but a religion of extremes, with extremists who "turn to rifles for their goals".
His comments come just a year after the newly appointed Pope enraged Muslims worldwide with a speech linking Islam with violence.
It led to churches being burned in the West Bank, a nun being shot dead in a Somalian hospital and the Iranian president accusing him of being in league with the US president, George Bush, to "repeat the Crusades" of old.
But Mgr Gaenswein has defended Pope Benedict's speech, saying it was an attempt by the Pontiff to "act against a certain naivety".
Vatican watchers say this is clearly aimed at western governments who bend over backwards to accommodate Muslims at cost to their own native Christian cultures."
From Telegraph.co.uk: "In France, people go on too much about the glory of motherhood," Maier has said. "I thought it would be fun to take a dig at the myth that having children is wonderful."
"Her French publisher, Editions Michalon, plans on making a fortune out of this book. It sent it out with an odd press release: "What are you doing this summer? Going on vacation, plan on having a bit of fun? Tropical ambiance, no clothes, dirty dancing? Sounds fun? Be careful, danger lurks! No we are not talking about Aids or Ebola but pregnancy; accidents happen so fast."
"Maier complains about all the things that most people with children feel but would never say: the loss of those wonderful lazy weekends, lounging in bed and drinking coffee on Sunday mornings; the vast expense of having a child; the overwhelming sense of responsibility for the next two decades."
"She hates McDonald's, Disneyland and the Disney Channel."
"But most of all, she hates the way that people's lives are curtailed and thwarted when they have children. If people did not have them, she retorts, "they'd think about what they really want and just go out and do it".
"And apparently, while Maier is in the minority, it's a trend that is growing. Last month, the newspaper Le Parisian said that 10 per cent of French women do not want to have children. Another book was published in France in January called Being a Woman Without Being a Mother."
In the Rhine Valley city of Mannheim, the glittering minaret of Germany's biggest mosque overshadows what was once the region's most vibrant church, testifying to Muslims' new confidence as Christian churches are closing down.
Mannheim is not unique. Across Europe, the Continent's fastest-growing religion is establishing its public presence after decades in basements and courtyards, changing not only the architectural look of cities, but also their social fabrics.
Hailed by many as a sign of Muslim integration, the phenomenon is also feared as evidence of a parallel Islamic world threatening Europe's Christian culture.
"Muslims have come out ... and have become visible," says Claus Leggewie, a political scientist at Germany's University of Giessen who wrote a study on the evolution of the mosque landscape in Germany. "By building expensive, representative mosques, they're sending a message: we want to take part in the symbolic landscape of Germany. We are here and we'll stay here."
Major mosque projects from Cologne, Germany, to Amsterdam to Seville, Spain, have met with fierce opposition and fears that they will serve as breeding grounds for terrorists. Family members of two of the suspects in the Glasgow, Scotland, car bombings this month said the men had been radicalized by Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic revivalist group with plans for an 18-acre complex near London's 2012 Olympic stadium that would house Europe's largest mosque.
Since coming to Germany, Muslim migrant workers like Mr. Kuzpinar have held prayer meetings in dark nooks that reflected the precarious situation of a people often torn between their adopted and their home countries.
But the "guest workers" who helped drive the economic boom of postwar Germany stayed. They set up organizations to run prayer, youth, and senior activities. They moved up the economic ladder, increasing their financial contributions to the groups, and receiving funds from pan-European Muslim organizations supporting the Muslim diaspora.
And now, the third generation is building domed mosques with minarets. Only a handful existed 10 years ago, but today 159 mosques dot Germany today, with 184 under construction, according to the Central Institute for Islamic Archives in Söst.
Aachen, for instance – a German city of 257,000 on the Belgian border with a 9 percent Muslim population – just gave the green light to a domed mosque with a minaret. That's a sign, says Mayor Jürgen Linden, "that Muslims have become a part and parcel of society."
But even in Cologne, in the western part of the country, plans for what would become Germany's biggest mosque – with two 170-foot minarets slated to accommodate 2,000 people – has ignited a conflict of cultures.
With more than 100,000 Muslims living in Cologne, Germany's fourth-largest city, many religious and political leaders have rallied around the mosque plan. But Ralph Giordano, a prominent writer and Holocaust survivor, rekindled fears of a radical Islam threatening German society. "The integration of Muslims has failed," Giordano told the media.
Endter says Germany's mainstream population can no longer afford to ignore that it lives in a country of immigrants.
"You can't say, on the one hand, "We invite you to work, come over,' and on the other hand say, "Yes, you can pray, but only in courtyards, basements, in the shadow of society,'" he says. "We are in a phase of upheaval. The Muslim communities want to integrate. They don't want to live in the shadow anymore."
For the entire article: Christian Science Monitor
``The burqa and niqab are a symbol of oppression of women,'' Wilders told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. He said burqas and the niqab - a full-faced veil with only a slit for the eyes - hindered integration of Muslim women into Dutch society and also posed a security risk.
An Islamic community spokesman, Ayhan Tonca, called Wilders' proposal ``totally out of proportion'' and accused him of seeking to broaden a rift between Muslims and the rest of Dutch society."
Wilders' reasoning sounds like common sense, however, with the dominance of relativism in the West --which renders so many unable to differentiate between Christianity and Islam --nothing would seemingly stop such a law from being applied to a convent full of nuns in habits?
For the full article see Guardian Unlimited
From Reuters: A call for descendents of Muslims expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century to be given preferential terms for Spanish citizenship has highlighted the country's uneasy relationship with its Islamic heritage.
The proposal was made at a meeting this week in Cordoba, a city in Andalusia which was the centre of Islamic civilization in the Iberian peninsula during nearly eight centuries of Moorish rule of much of what is now Spain and Portugal.
In 1609, Spain's King Philip III ordered all Muslims to leave his kingdom, leading to the expulsion of about 300,000 people. Their descendents today mainly live in North Africa and still regard themselves as "Andalusians", after the old name for Muslim Spain -- "Al Andalus"
Giving them preferential terms for Spanish citizenship would be an act of symbolic reconciliation, said Mansur Escudero, head of Spain's Islamic Board, the biggest group representing Spanish Muslims.
"The Andalusians who live in North Africa, most of them in Morocco, in Tunisia, in Libya, they're part of those societies and aren't going to want to come to Spain," Escudero said.
"It would be more of an emotional, moral gesture, a recognition of an historic injustice," he told Reuters, adding that some "Andalusian" families still preserved keys to houses they left behind four centuries ago.
Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492, already have a special right to obtain Spanish citizenship after two years legal residence in Spain, a privilege also available to citizens of Spain's former colonies.
A small left-wing party, Izquierda Unida, has backed the call for preferential citizenship for descendents of Spanish Muslims. The governing Socialists, who have promoted an "Alliance of Civilizations" between the West and Islam, have yet to give their response, Escudero said.
But many Spaniards, particularly Catholic conservatives, fret about Muslim assertiveness, especially now that immigration has given the country a significant Muslim population -- about one million -- for the first time in 400 years.
The Madrid train bombings, blamed on a group linked to al Qaeda, which killed 192 people in 2004, have deepened suspicions about Islam in sectors of the Spanish political right.
Former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a member of the conservative Popular Party, last year called for Muslims to apologise for invading Spain in the eighth century.
The Popular Party's current foreign affairs spokesman, Gustavo de Arestegui, has also published a book whose subtitle is: "The obsession with reconquering Al Andalus."
"We need more children to support our societies
into the future, but it is very clear now: No
children are coming."
German
urban-affairs expert Albrecht
Goeschel
If you are
not yet convinced that the battle to save Europe is
NOW-- and not in the year 2050 when the demographics
have inalterably taken hold of the continent, then
here is a bit more information to bring any skeptics
up to speed.
A recent report shows that Germany's birth rate continued to
decline in 2006. The
government's socialistic incentives designed to
increase baby-making have failed, and the upbeat
predictions of a baby boom are now bust. There
were more deaths than births which means that
Germans failed to replace themselves. There are
now widespread reports of a loss of workers to do
menial labor throughout Europe. Without native
born workers Europe is left with no choice but to
liberalize immigration laws in order to sustain
its economy. This is a quandry since many fear
that a liberalization of immigration laws may
bring terrorism, or worse yet, the creation of
Eurabia.
The battle to save Europe is now because the only way
to prevent the seemingly inevitable disintegration of
civilization as we know it-- is for the inhabitants
of the continent to return to the faith--not to mere
christianity, but specifically to the only religion
that stands against the sins that have brought about
this crisis --Catholicism. Nothing else can pry the
contraceptives out of the hands of Europe's populace.
Here is a report from McClatchy:
Last
spring, as farmer Gerald Simianer was preparing to
harvest white asparagus, one of Germany's culinary
delicacies, he followed the instructions of his local
labor office and employed at least 20 percent German
workers. Simianer, a fourth-generation asparagus
farmer in this village near Berlin, hired 30 Germans
among his 150 field workers. He paid $5.50 an hour,
increasing that to about $10 an hour depending on
production; a decent wage, he thinks, in his rural
community. Within a month, 27 of the 30 Germans had
quit, he said. His father, Hugo, scoffed: "They quit
within days, within hours almost."
Reserving German jobs for German workers might sound
reasonable in a country with 9 percent unemployment.
But Germans won't accept menial jobs. And that
problem is so big that no politician wants to
articulate the answer: more liberal immigration
policies.
Even more than in the United States, immigration is
one of the most significant issues of this generation
in Europe. The native-born population is in a
long-term decline, but resistance to immigrant labor
is growing. Amid fears that more immigrants spell
more terrorism, there's no political will to tackle
the issue.
The
demographic crisis first became apparent a decade
ago, when birthrates plummeted below the level needed
to maintain the population, leading governments to
institute longer maternity leaves, cash incentives
and more child care to deal with the lack of
children. But nothing has
worked.
The Czech Republic's population is expected to
decline 40 percent by 2050, Italy's by 28 percent.
Germany is expected to decline from 82 million
residents to 59 million, and from 41 million
working-age residents to 26 million.
The European Union population, now 455 million, is
expected to shrink to 430 million during the same
period, while the United States, with 295 million
people now, is expected to grow to 420 million.
Demographers are convinced that the birthrates won't
bounce back, meaning that the centuries-old European
culture is on a path of slow death.
"We call it a will for collective
suicide,"
German urban-affairs expert Albrecht Goeschel
said.
"We need more children to support our societies
into the future, but it is very clear now: No
children are coming."
Which
means that Europe - still struggling to integrate
immigrants who arrived a generation ago - will have
to open its borders to more immigration. It doesn't
want to, however, even to support age-old traditions
such as putting fresh white asparagus on the table.
Since the 1500s, spargel has been as much a part of
German culture as sauerkraut or beer. But it's a
labor-intensive crop, raised under mounds of
soft-tilled earth and sometimes reflecting foil. It
never sees the sun and never photosynthesizes. It has
to be picked fresh to retain its light, almost sweet,
taste. From April, when the harvest begins, to June
20, when, by tradition, the harvest must end, much of
German culinary life revolves around spargel.
Germans love everything about the white asparagus.
Except, of course, harvesting it. At the same time,
they put up obstacles to others arriving to do the
work, arguing that they're taking jobs that should go
to Germans, even if Germans won't take the jobs.
"The
work, they said, was too hard, so they quit to claim
unemployment benefits,"
Simianer recounted of his German
employees.
Of the other 120 workers - Poles, Croats and
other eastern Europeans - "no one ever quits, unless
they get seriously ill."
This year he obtained an emergency exemption from the
government to hire non-German labor to bring in the
harvest. Croatian Pavo Kovacevic has been coming for
the harvest for 15 years, for a very simple reason:
"There are no good jobs in Croatia. Many times, there
is no work at all."
He may not feel entirely welcome in Germany, but he's
sure he'll be back.
"Who else would they find willing to do this work?
Germans?" he said, and laughed. "They may not want
us, but they need us."
Experts think that the mood shift against immigration
is gaining momentum because of such events as the
international protests over Denmark's Islamic
cartoons, the murder of Theo van Gogh in the
Netherlands by a Muslim immigrant and the London and
Madrid mass-transit bombings, carried out by
"non-natives," or immigrants.
Dutch historian Maarten van Rossem of Utrecht
University notes that since November 2004 - when a
man dressed in Islamic robes shot and stabbed to
death van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who shared a name
with his great-great-grandfather, the brother of
artist Vincent van Gogh - the traditionally open
Dutch have clamored for closed borders.
"It's
a symbol of what immigration has done to the
Netherlands, of how it's failed," he said of public
perception, "of how we've stupidly invited 1 million
murderers into our home."
Martin Potucek, the director of the Center for Social
and Economic Strategies in Prague, Czech Republic,
describes
Europe's population decline as having "negative
effects on all facets of life. We won't be able to
support pensions or health care or education. We'll
be a much older society. ... We'll simply cease to be
a vibrant, and at some point viable, society."
Demographers
often talk about 2050 as the crisis date, but the
pain will be felt much sooner. Death rates already
have passed birthrates in several nations, and fewer
employees are entering the job market than are
retiring from it.
"We all joke that we don't want to live past 2010,"
said Jitka Rychtarikova, a demographer at Charles
University in Prague.
Meanwhile, nationalism - along with nativism,
anti-immigrant sentiment - is gaining ground. In the
Netherlands, officials insist that new immigrants
pass Dutch history tests, and bookshelves are filled
with memories of life in wooden shoes, back on the
canals and flat farmland that make up most of the
tiny nation.
Rob Boudewijn, who heads European studies for the
Netherlands' respected Clingendael institute, a
research center, said that 20 years ago a politician
who criticized immigration "was a kook, an outcast, a
fascist," he said. "Today, he's mainstream, and if
he's not anti-immigrant, he's a kook the other way."
In Beelitz, Germany, which is surrounded by the
white-tarp-covered ridges of spargel growing,
Simianer worries that one casualty of this might be
the spargel culture. In fact, many field workers from
Poland have found better-paying work in England.
"I have two children I hope will grow up with the
spargel culture," he said. "But I worry it might be
nearing an end."