"Demographic time bomb"

Since my "alarmist" book came out, I notice the British and European media have begun to meet me halfway:

A Fifth Of European Union Will Be Muslim By 2050

Britain, Spain and Holland will have an even higher proportion of Muslims in a shorter amount of time, an investigation by The Telegraph shows.

A couple of points. The "European Union" is a fairly meaningless statistical concept including as it does places far off the Muslim-beaten path (Estonia). What counts are real jurisdictions - first, the major cities, which are already on the brink of majority Muslim status, from Malmo in Sweden to the EU capital Brussels; and, after the cities, individual nations.

Critics of my thesis, most of whom don't seem to have read the book, like to obsess about the point at which Europe becomes 50.1 per cent Muslim: Steyn's full of hooey; it won't happen till 2100, or 2200, if ever. But as I say about 30 pages in. it is not necessary for Islam to become a statistical majority in order to function as one. At the height of its power a millennium and a quarter back, "the Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, yet its population was only minority Muslim.

So what's the point at which a society starts to become Muslim in its socio-political character? My book quotes the 2005 Freedom House rankings: Of the 46 Muslim majority nations only three were ranked as free. But of the 16 nations in which Muslims form between 20 and 50 per cent of the population, only another three were ranked as free: Benin, Serbia & Montenegro (as it was then), and Suriname.

So 20 per cent seems a good starting point. For what it's worth, I'll bet the EU will be a lot more than one-fifth Muslim by 2050. As for those countries the Telegraph puts in the fast lane, a Netherlands or a United Kingdom that becomes 30 per cent Muslim will not just be more "diverse" but in ways both profound and trivial no longer Dutch or British. It's happening. You can argue about the speed, but not about the destination.