The other day, Arnoud van Doorn, the producer of Wilders's anti-Islamic film Fitna, announced that he'd converted to Islam — or "accepted Islam," as they say — and made a pilgrimage to Medina to repent and ask for Allah's forgiveness. There's a lot of it about. Tony Blair's sister-in-law has converted. So has Gitmo guard Terry Holdbrooks, who was touched by the way the detainees "wake up each day and smile," and Katherine Russell, the "all-American girl" from Rhode Island who married Tamerlan Tsarnaev and whose parents were "very supportive" of their daughter's decision to "accept Islam" and retreat beneath the veil and stayed "very supportive" right up until their son-in-law blew up the Boston Marathon. The two men who butchered Royal Fusilier Lee Rigby on the streets of London were also converts, British-born sons of Nigerian Christians.I balked at it because I recall a story in the Weekly Standard from the Bush era about the untold story of African Christian immigration to Holland, and how the much-predicted Islamization of the Dutch was not materializing.
So I googled, and 6 years later the news does seem depressing.
Europeans (including Liam Neeson acc. to this report!) Increasingly Converting to Islam
Rise of Islamic converts challenges France
BBC News Video: Europeans Converting to Islam (this report claims WOMEN are the converts by 3-1. Why would that be?)
Then I looked for Christian immigration, and it's running about neck and neck with Islamic immigration.
the share of Christian immigrants (42%) and the share of Muslim immigrants (39%) in the E.U. are much closer, though Christians still outnumber Muslim immigrants by nearly 1 million.
So back to Steyn:
"Terrorism's great achievement isn't hijacking jetliners, but hijacking the debate," wrote George Jonas in Canada's National Post. "Successful terrorism persuades the terror-stricken that he's conscience-stricken." Which is why, in the decade after 9/11, Western governments ramped up Islamic immigration instead of slowing it to a trickle; and their citizens were "very supportive" of those who converted in record numbers, instead of mourning the wholesale abandonment of their inheritance; and their community-outreach enforcers dragged those who disrespected the Prophet into court for ever more footling infractions, instead of obliging Islam to adjust to core Western values like freedom of expression. Meanwhile, Islamic self-segregation intensified. The "War on Terror" was always an evasion, for "terror" doesn't easily encompass, say, demands for segregated swimming sessions or even the nightly car burnings in Stockholm. It does, however, accurately capture the response of Sweden's "center-right" government, bleating about doing more to alleviate "social exclusion." We now expect European leaders to sound like battered wives — like Katherine Tsarnaev.I still insist there is a counter-movement, as that 2007 story indicates And remember all those fervent Eye-talian Christians I wrote about last week? They are growing, not shrinking. But Steyn'ss not wrong and it's more of a horse race than I understood previously. If we think Islam isn't attractive and there's nothing to worry about, we are wrong. A culture with no standards will cause people to seek security and protection. When the culture doesn't offer it, strict rules and Islamic submission do.
