Is it the demography stupid?
Mark Steyn has been hammering on the subject of demography for a while now, ploughing a fairly lonely furrow it has to be said. The essential thesis is that the catastrophically low birth rates in the developed West (1.2 in Italy, 1.5 in Spain) coupled with the very much higher birth rates among Muslims in particular (3.5 in Europe, 7 and above in some places) is leading to the end of the Christian West - the flag of Islam will fly over Downing Street, it's only a matter of when.
Without going too deeply into the rights and wrongs of this, is it perhaps extending this analysis to another area of world politics Mark is interested in - the war on terror? Because it's a pretty unarguable fact that the group most susceptible to violence and stupidity is young men. Muslim countries have about the highest proportion of young men in the world at the moment (I believe the average age in Iran now is under 25). Is it not therefore entirely natural that the countries most prone to violence should be those with an unusually large proportion of young men? Compare Japan's demographic profile today with the 1930s. Anyway, it's a possibility.
posted by Tim J at
4:06 pm
4 Comments:
Your point and Steyn's are the same. If you have a high birth rate then you will also have a demographic bulge in lower age groups.
Iran is actually one of the few islamic countries to have instigated a successful birth control policy, their population will age and stabilise over the next half century, but this isn't true of most of the Arab countries where even the wealthy ones have collosal birth rates.
Up to a point - Steyn is saying that the West's low birth rates will lead to its takeover by an Islamism that is hostile to everything the West stands for - I'm wondering if a degree of the 'difference with Islam' is caused by its preponderance of young males - the points are definitely linked, but there is a distinction.
I'm sure Steyn has used in conjuction with the populations of the ME as well as Europe. I seem to recall him mentioned the average age and bulge in Gaza and the West Bank as compared to Israel.
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