Muslims Procreating Like Crazy

Catholics have traditionally been well known for using the marriage bed to create lots of new Catholics -- but they're playing second fiddle to Muslims now:

ROME, March 31 (AP/Breitbart) - The Muslim population in the world exceeded that of Catholics in 2006 for the first time in history, the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano reported Sunday, adding that the makeover came about as a result of higher fertility rates among Muslims than Catholics. ...

According to the report, Muslims accounted for 19.2 percent of the total world population as of 2006, while Catholics made up 17.4 percent and Christians as a whole roughly 33 percent. No specific numbers were unveiled.

The newspaper said the Islamic population is rising chiefly in developing nations, while the number of Catholics remain almost flat in European nations with some growth being seen in Latin America.

The troubling undercurrent of Muslim demographic in Europe has been well documented. It's Muslim growth in the Muslim world that worries me more, because as long as there's overpopulation and under-opportunity in the Islamic world, there will be room for radical Imams and hopeless souls who will follow them into jihad.

That's why I still believe to the neocon ideal of bettering the economic and political situation in Muslim nations, a surefire way to reduce the Muslim birthrate -- and achieve many much more important goals.

Islamification of Europe Marching On

The Muslim demographic onslaught and the Western world's demographic surrender is now official, with the publication of the U.N.'s latest population projections:

According to the 2006 Revision, the world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion over the next 43 years, passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.

In contrast, the population of the more developed regions is expected to remain largely unchanged at 1.2 billion, and would have declined were it not for the projected net migration from developing to developed countries, which is expected to average 2.3 million persons annually.

In the case of Europe, this is what the UN study portends:

How the West will deal with this influx is predictable: in a Western manner; liberal, fair, just, tolerant. How the incoming Muslim throngs will deal with their new Western home is another question entirely, and the long-term prospects for Western civilization in Europe are not good.

hat-tip: Brussels Journal

Yeah, But Will The Muslims Listen?

James Taranto and crew at BOTWT have mighty funny tales to tell every weekday and today's offering ended with a bang, led into by a list of worst titles of the year offered by a publisher. One of the titles, "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence," triggered this:

That last one caught our attention, so we looked it up on Amazon.com. The author, David Benatar, is head of the philosophy department at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Here's the book description from Amazon:

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence--rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should--they presume that they do them no harm.

Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.

Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence.

The author then argues for the "anti-natal" view--that it is always wrong to have children--and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a "pro-death" view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct.

Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.

So basically, this joker has built an entire philosophy around the childish protest "I didn't ask to be born!"

Benatar has succeeded in capturing the selfish existentialism of the urban West, and its desire to simply stop procreating. He gives it a glossy psychiatric sheen, but beneath his arguments is this: Life for us is more fun if we don't have sagging-diapered little brats running about.

His ruminations are lost on the Muslims. He would have us become a demographic footnote while Muslim populations in the western democracies surge.

Note to Benatar: Never having been equals never having voted. Got it?