Below is the most recent opinion piece by the Austrian writer Andreas Unterberger, as published last Friday at the author’s website. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:

Islam: The Good News and the Bad News for Europe

by Andreas Unterberger

January 9, 2015

The new book by the bestselling French author Michel Houellebecq is on everyone’s mind, because of the Paris attacks. It envisions a Muslim president of France in eight years, and the elimination of all “infidels” from the “Islamic University of the Sorbonne.” Actually, the demographic development makes that most likely a few years later. But, in fact, the triumph of Islam over what was once the West could take place in eight years. Indeed, the tendency of most leftist parties is to prefer voting for Muslim candidates than for those from anti-Islamic parties.

That is the logical result of their intensive efforts in recent years to label all Islam critics as neo-Nazis. It was ostensibly a strategy to retain power, but with no factual basis. This characterization has become an unquestioned axiom and, therefore, a self-made trap.

Something similar is happening in Germany, where there has been increasing support for Islam-critical demonstrations. Where, however, all the Bundestag parties (excepting only the CSU*) have made the mistake of denouncing as rightist-radical the rapidly growing concerns of that portion of the population that is still in the majority. Even as partisan tactics, that is stupid. It is to be expected that Muslim-qua-Muslim parties will be forming everywhere in Europe in coming years. And as that happens, the present membership of Muslims in red and green parties will be a thing of the past.

The SPD parliamentary leader Opperman had a particularly dramatic reaction after the Paris attacks. “These are killers, not Muslims,” he decreed, without explaining why these two terms should be mutually exclusive, And, as a reaction to this attack on freedom of expression, he actually demanded that PEGIDA stop its demonstrations. With no understanding of the fact that this is what the Islamists want — for any further peaceful exercise of freedom of expression to be made impossible. Some Europeans believe that prognoses about an Islamic majority are like predictions of economic cycles — just reading tea leaves. But that is wrong, because demography — even in reference to the future — is based on hard facts. The mothers of the next generations are already born. Or not born. And the tendency to be prolific is an amazingly firm constant. The more educated, the more cosmopolitan, the more non-Muslim women are, the fewer children they have. That has been true for decades now. And in every country in Europe. It is therefore almost inevitable that several European countries will have Muslim majorities sometime in this century.

A Religion Like Any Other?

Now this does not mean that we can just await Europe’s future with resignation. There are a number of factors that can still be influenced (by, for instance: emphatically liberal-democratic education, stopping any further immigration, firm action against preachers hostile to women and the constitution, etc.). Of course, that will only happen if Europe’s governments, the EU and the media finally recognize the ominous developments. If they do not continue across-the-board to prefer repression and concentration on the teeny-tiny pseudo-problems of the real world.

Others are soothing, saying: Islam is a religion like many others. That’s not bothering anybody. It doesn’t matter, in present-day Europe, whether you live in a country with a Catholic or an Anglican or a lay majority, or a Nordic national church. Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu — it’s all the same.