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rfmcdonaldI'm unsurprised that Mark Steyn enthusiastically supports the ridiculous claims of Australian parliamentarian Danna Vale that if RU-486 becomes available in her country, Australia will Muslim-majority country.
Vale and Steyn both are fond of ill-digested pop demography, too:
Never mind that, assuming that each Australian woman needs to give birth to 2.1 children to sustain the population and that fertility rates don't change over a generation, these quoted fertility rates will produce a slight shrinkage among the non-religious, growth by a quarter among Christians, and growth by one-half among Muslims. Just, well, never mind dissecting the actual consequences of the figures produced.
Back in April 2004 I dissected the myth of an imminently Islamized France. I'm not going to do this for Australia because the thesis is so self-obviously ridiculous it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. The durable spectre of the infinitely fecund Muslim womb remains, nonetheless.
Citing estimates of 100,000 abortions a year, Danna Vale, a member of Prime Minister John Howard's ruling coalition, told a press conference that Australians were "aborting ourselves almost out of existence."
Vale linked the concern with worries about the growth of Australia's Muslim community.
She recalled reading a newspaper article in which an imam from a leading mosque in Sydney was quoted as saying Australia would be a Muslim nation within 50 years.
"I didn't believe him at the time, but you know when you actually look at the birthrates and when you look at the fact that we are aborting ourselves almost out of existence by 100,000 abortions every year ... you multiply that by 50 years, that's five million potential Australians we won't have here."
Asked whether Australians should therefore be concerned about abortion "in case we become a Muslim nation," Vale added: "I'm talking about the ramifications it actually has for the community and the nation we'll become in the future."
Vale and Steyn both are fond of ill-digested pop demography, too:
Citing 1996 census figures, [Australian federal treasurer Peter] Costello said women aged 15-30 who describe themselves as Christian had given birth to an average of 0.39 children, while the figure for Muslims was 0.75.
For women over the age of 30, the figures were 1.9 for those of no religion, 2.4 for Christians, and 3.0 for Muslims.
Ethnicity also played a role, he said: Fertility rates for Australian women born abroad showed that the highest were from Muslim countries -- Lebanon (3.54), Turkey (2.54) and Egypt (2.49).
According to 2005 estimates published in the CIA World Factbook, the countries with the highest TFRs are mostly Muslim and African ones.
Niger, a mostly Muslim country in north-west Africa, heads the list with an average of 7.55 babies per woman of childbearing age.
Of the 35 nations topping the list - each with an average TFR of five children or more - 20 are Islamic or have an Islamic majority.
Never mind that, assuming that each Australian woman needs to give birth to 2.1 children to sustain the population and that fertility rates don't change over a generation, these quoted fertility rates will produce a slight shrinkage among the non-religious, growth by a quarter among Christians, and growth by one-half among Muslims. Just, well, never mind dissecting the actual consequences of the figures produced.
Back in April 2004 I dissected the myth of an imminently Islamized France. I'm not going to do this for Australia because the thesis is so self-obviously ridiculous it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. The durable spectre of the infinitely fecund Muslim womb remains, nonetheless.
