"Today the Moroccan figure is below three, while the CIA World Factbook estimates the Algerian, Turkish and Tunisian figures at below two, lower than France's. No serious demographer expects an Islamic takeover."

In fairness, even with the low birth rate, I do expect Muslims to predominate in Algeria, Turkey, and Tunisia any time now.:-)

Not if the Tunisian government has a say in the matter.

Interesting.

I totally agree with the point about how all of these "Eurabia" theorists - and I include in that category the likes of Hirsi Magan, as well as non-Euros like our friend Manji, or even Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie - have this ludicrous self-image as lone crusaders against political correctness. When, in fact, books which slag off Islam - however poorly written - have a good chance of becoming bestsellers, and any nobody who bleats about how Islam is "taking over Europe" and "nobody is listening to us" is in fact instantly guaranteed a hearing. Who among us would have heard of Irshad Manji if she had stuck to her rad-fem dyke show?

Hopefully, in the not too distant future people will look back on the Eurabia hysteria with much the same contempt as we now look back on the reds under the beds scare.

Interesting review by Kuper, whose book about the Ajax football team is a must - he manages to mix football and politics effortlessly. There are local equivalents of the Eurabia loonies in each European country - you have Alain Finkielkraut, Maurice G. Dantec, and a raft of editorialists in France, and a burgeoning filial in Sweden - to say nothing of the Netherlands or Italy (remember Oriana Fallaci, anyone?). The rhetoric is of course quite similar to the mccarthyist hysteria, but also to the antisemitic litterature of the 30's - the Jews were poised to take over then, according to many debaters then...

Funny too how their rhetoric fits well, except for the religious vocabulary, with the takfiri and jihadi gang...

Problem is that the likes of Eurabia writer are more popular than one can think. FT is not popular as other paper can be and the likes of Oriana Fallaci write on them.

@Ibn Kafka I think that the tone may be similar but it's a bit different. Antisemitic literature was using ancient stereothypes in this case it's something different. It does not relates to historical lies and urban legend, they do not the Turks at the door of Wien, they use a single fact or an impression to represent the big picture. But they do it on the main newspapers.
What happens is this: if I go to a veggie restaurant with a veggie friend, it's modern and cultured and blah blah. If I go to a veggie restaurant with a muslim friend, it's the muslim that is imposing the cultural view and blah blah.
As most of the people who say these never talk to one in they own life, that kind of culture is spreading and is dangerous.
Unfortunately people does not read the FT, they read the likes of the Fallaci on the main paper.

annarella -- ...I think that the tone may be similar but it's a bit different. Antisemitic literature was using ancient stereothypes in this case it's something different. It does not relates to historical lies and urban legend, they do not the Turks at the door of Wien, they use a single fact or an impression to represent the big picture. But they do it on the main newspapers.

I do agree with you that modern Islamphobia is not the same as 1930s anti-Semitism, and that that was much more connected to historical/religious stereotype. The social setting was also vastly different, with European Jews being totally indigenous, but (depending on the region) only recently emancipated or still effectively ghettoized, and with little or no contact with foreign Jewish communities (or even awareness of these communities among Jew-haters). In contrast, modern anti-Islam sentiment is driven very much by factors relating to globalization, that may seem external to society: anti-immigration sentiment, post-colonial "Orientalism", the growing pains of economic liberalization and international politics like Israel-Palestine or 9/11. (Of course, many of those factors are in reality not "external" at all. For example, the scares -- and real problems -- raised by mass immigration are quite similar to how the Jewish entry into Western/Central European society created new competition and provided a scapegoat for the unpleasantries of economic transformation.)

But, all that said, there are a lot of old stereotypes current in the Phillips/Fallaci-variety of anti-Muslim xenophobia, too. Quite a few of the old medieval anti-Islam arguments are coming back: Muslim fanaticism, Oriental lethargy, a religion spread by the sword, Muhammad-as-child-molestor, and -- on the US radical Christian side of the moon -- the Islamic God being a "false God". One shouldn't overstate it, since mainstream Islamophobia is clearly modern and cultural-economic, but there are these kinds of historical echoes also.

As for the gates of Vienna, they seem to pop up again and again, as the Eurabian takeover nonsense is gaining force. But, as the FT article pointed out, mostly on the US rightwing fringe. I doubt the average European Islamophobe would even understand the reference, much less think it's a cause for concern today. Over here, racists are more worried that swarthy Muslims will make off with their jobs and women, or knock them down and steal their cell-phones in a suburb somewhere.

Well, I suppose that different people have different reasons to be islamophobic as they have to be antisemitic or anti-Western. I think that islamophobia is in most cases a subspecies of xenophobia (see for example Dansk Folkeparti in Denmark or Front National in France), but there are examples of islamophobic movements that are not wenophobic (if I'm not mistaken, this would seem to have been the case of Pim Fortuyn's short-lived movement, which was lead after his assassination by a coloured person).

Countries where religious feelings are still pervasive, such as the US or Italy, will have a streak of islamophobia more reminescent of the orientalist clichés.

Then you have France, where you have a "laïc" version of islamophobia which might indeed be opposed to xenophobia and even progressive in general terms but in favor of special restrictive measures against Muslims - as for instance the headscarf ban, even though all its supporters are not islamophobic - and with a conspirationist and very shrill view on anything islamic - the militant lesbian feminist Fiammetta venner would be a good example of that very special French touch...

Gates of Vienna? Not only a US phenomenon: Poitiers, 732 and Charles Martel are well-known concepts in French extreme right-wing & islamophobic circles, and I suppose there are other examples in other countries. And I do not think, generally speaking, that the average US person would be able to locate Vienna on a map, and even less to have heard about the Gates of Vienna as a historical concept...

You have no idea how many otherwise intelligent friends of mine drag up the "Caliphate of Europe" demographic argument.
Well, now that I think about it, only two, and a third who quotes his father quoting Mark Steyn. But that still seems far too many.
Something I have experienced from time to time is anti-Islamic Christians slagging off Islam to me and expecting me to sympathize because I am a Jew. My favorite was a Catholic priest explaining to me that Moslems were just heretical Christians. They seem surprised when I get upset with them.

From a christian point of view muslims are just heretical christians, though.

From a Christian point of view, Muslims are believers of a different religion.

"Something I have experienced from time to time is anti-Islamic Christians slagging off Islam to me and expecting me to sympathize because I am a Jew."

Interesting. I've had similar experiences in my travels in the Arab world, where Arab Christians would slag off Muslims in really crass terms, assuming that I, nominally also a Christian, would share their views.. They would then be mildly shocked when I didn't agree with them.